ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the purposeful discontinuation of a socio-technical regime, no matter what stage or path of development, maturity, or age. “Discontinuation” means the rather actively pursued exit from a socio-technical regime. Discontinuation is not the opposite of innovation, but of continuation. The phenomenon itself cannot be subsumed under existing concepts, patterns, and models; existing research was too often blind for the interplay between discontinuity, socio-technical phenomena, and governance, and therefore the optics for grasping it in an adequate way need to be invented. In the chapter, an overview is developed of approaches that offer the chance to get to the bottom of discontinuation governance-in-action. A number of relevant existing concepts are introduced that can help increase the awareness of discontinuation governance. The chapter concludes with a series of challenges that discontinuation governance research is currently facing.
