Technological transitions (TT) can best be described as a collection of theories regarding how technological innovations occur, the driving forces behind them, and how they are incorporated into society. TT draws on a number of fields, including history of science, technology studies, and evolutionary economics. Alongside the technological advancement, TT considers wider societal changes such as "user practices, regulation, industrial networks (supply, production, distribution), infrastructure, and symbolic meaning or culture". Hughes refers to the 'seamless web' where physical artifacts, organizations, scientific communities, and social practices combine. A technological transition occurs when there is a major shift in these socio-technical configurations.
Origins
Work on technological transitions draws on a number of fields including history of science, technology studies, and evolutionary economics. The focus of evolutionary economics is on economic change, but as a driver of this technological change has been considered in the literature. Joseph Schumpeter, in his classic Theory of Economic Development placed the emphasis on non-economic forces as the driver for growth. The human actor, the entrepreneur is seen as the cause of economic development which occurs as a cyclical process. Schumpeter proposed that radical innovations were the catalyst for Kondratiev cycles.
Long wave theory
The Russian economist Kondratiev proposed that economic growth operated in boom and bust cycles of approximately 50 year periods. These cycles were characterised by periods of expansion, stagnation and recession. The period of expansion is associated with the introduction of a new technology, e.g. steam power or the microprocessor. At the time of publication, Kondratiev had considered that two cycles had occurred in the nineteenth century and third was beginning at the turn of the twentieth. Modern writers, such as Freeman and Perez outlined five cycles in the modern age:
The Industrial Revolution (1770–1830) Victorian Prosperity: Age of steam and Rail (1830–1880) The Age of Steel (1880–1930) Oil, Mass Production and the Consumer Society (1930–1980) The Information Age (1980-?)
Freeman and Perez proposed that each cycle consists of pervasive technologies, their production and economic structures that support them. Termed 'techno-economic paradigms', they suggest that the shift from one paradigm to another is the result of emergent new technologies.
Following the recent economic crisis, authors such as Moody and Nogrady have suggested that a new cycle is emerging from the old, centred on the use of sustainable technologies in a resource depleted world.
Technological paradigms, trajectories and regimes
Thomas Kuhn described how a paradigm shift is a wholesale shift in the basic understanding of a scientific theory. Examples in science include the change of thought from miasma to germ theory as a cause of disease. Building on this work, Giovanni Dosi developed the concept of 'technical paradigms' and 'technological trajectories'. In considering how engineers work, the technical paradigm is an outlook on the technological problem, a definition of what the problems and solutions are. It charts the idea of specific progress. By identifying the problems to be solved the paradigm exerts an influence on technological change. The pattern of problem solving activity and the direction of progress is the technological trajectory. In similar fashion, Nelson and Winter (,)defined the concept of the 'technological regime' which directs technological change through the beliefs of engineers of what problems to solve. The work of the actors and organisations is the result of organisational and cognitive routines which determines search behaviour. This places boundaries and also trajectories (direction) to those boundaries.
Multi-level perspective (MLP) on technological transitions
Socio-technical systems and transitions
Recently, the scope of academic sustainability discourse and investigative focus has broadened beyond the study of technological products, innovations and subsequent transitions. Much of the literature now examines technological artefacts and innovations through a wider scope of socio-technical systems. It has been argued that this contemporary framework has emerged in response to both an increased understanding of the urgency of environmental problems and the recognition that more substantiative transitions are required across multiple interdependent systems to mitigate impacts.