ABSTRACT
I.5.1. INTRODUCTION: NURTURING HOPEFUL MONSTROSITIES
Following Mokyr, we describe new technologies as “hopeful monstrosities” (Mokyr, 1990; 291). They are hopeful because product champions believe in a promising future, but monstrous because they perform crudely. As Rosenberg (1976: 195) argues: “most inventions are relatively crude and ineffi cient at the date when they are fi rst recognized as constituting a new invention. They are, of necessity, badly adapted to many of the ultimate uses to which they will eventually be put.” This means that new technologies cannot immediately compete on the market against established technologies. This problem is pivotal for many new technologies with sustainability promise for energy, transportation, agriculture, etc. There is no lack of such new technologies, which are developed in R&D labs and put to use in demonstration projects. They have a hard time, however, bridging the valley of death between R&D and market introduction. The crossovers between STS, evolutionary economics and sociology led not only to the formulation of the MLP perspective on transitions, but also to development of a new policy perspective on how to modulate the emergence of niches with high potential for sustainable development: Strategic Niche Management (Kemp et al., 1998). A core assumption of the Strategic Niche Management approach (SNM) is that sustainable innovation journeys can be facilitated by the creation of technological niches, i.e. protected spaces that allow nurturing and experimentation with the co-evolution of technology, user practices and regulatory structures (see also Chapter I.2.3.). SNM does not suggest that governments create niches in a top-down fashion, as is sometimes assumed by commentators, but focuses instead on endogenous steering, or steering from within (Rip, 2006; Nill and Kemp, 2009). Such steering can be enacted by a range of actors, including users and societal groups. Steering can address many parts of the process, by adding a new actor, a specifi c learning process, or a set of demonstration projects which may redirect evolving dynamics towards a desired path. Niches are not inserted by governments, but are assumed to emerge through collective enactment. Nevertheless, their (future) course can be modulated into
more sustainable directions. Because of these characteristics, we would like to defi ne SNM as a form of refl exive governance (see also the chapters by Grin, Part III).
