In the context of a multi-level perspective on transition, Articles 1 and 2 describe the dynamics between levels: the changing landscape exerting pressure on the regime, which appears to destabilise the regime. Landscape level factors can also trigger niche innovations, as well as create opportunities for niches.
In Article 1, which deals with the shift of a techno-economic paradigm to the information era, and the regional adjustment, the question is very close to the question of inertia between landscape changes and the regime level, which here is represented by regional actors and decision makers. The question here is about the problematic effects of a new megatrend and change of paradigm to regions and organisations. The regions and organisations are settings for many opinions and contrasting ideologies. This confusion can constitute socio-institutional inertia, preventing the region from taking the steps needed for development.
Inertia arises, for example, from sticking to a declining industry or to a prevailing operational model characterised by routines and stable social relationships.
Adaption to the change of techno-economic paradigm and the emerging megatrends, like ageing, requires a change in thinking as well as a change of structures. Such new thinking is required in many levels, for example, the regions and organisations. However, certain lock-ins
were asked to evaluate on a scale of one to five, where one is the worst and five the best score, how well the core process thinking works in creating the age business network. They were also asked, using the same scale, to evaluate the opportunities of the age business in the Lahti region. The questionnaire also mapped out the participants’ ideas for good ways to further develop the age business.
9 RESULTS OF THE STUDY
In this section, I will study the results of the original articles as applied in the context of a multi-level perspective on transition and explaining and describing the dynamics of the socio-technical regime. The results of the articles are utilised to describe the relationships between parts of the system.
In this context, Articles 1-2 handle the dynamics between landscape-level changes and the socio-institutional regime and also touch on the emergence of niche-level elements. Articles 3-4 deal with technology as intertwined with its environment, and the regime-level dynamics between different subsystems in the regime. The contextual and constitutive technologies of ageing are brought to the fore. Article 5 deals with facilitating the emergence of niche-level innovations such as building an innovation network around opportunities offered by ageing, where different backgrounds meet.
9.1 Dynamics between levels: overcoming the collisions
In the context of a multi-level perspective on transition, Articles 1 and 2 describe the dynamics between levels: the changing landscape exerting pressure on the regime, which appears to destabilise the regime. Landscape level factors can also trigger niche innovations, as well as create opportunities for niches.
In Article 1, which deals with the shift of a techno-economic paradigm to the information era, and the regional adjustment, the question is very close to the question of inertia between landscape changes and the regime level, which here is represented by regional actors and decision makers. The question here is about the problematic effects of a new megatrend and change of paradigm to regions and organisations. The regions and organisations are settings for many opinions and contrasting ideologies. This confusion can constitute socio-institutional inertia, preventing the region from taking the steps needed for development.
Inertia arises, for example, from sticking to a declining industry or to a prevailing operational model characterised by routines and stable social relationships.
Adaption to the change of techno-economic paradigm and the emerging megatrends, like ageing, requires a change in thinking as well as a change of structures. Such new thinking is required in many levels, for example, the regions and organisations. However, certain lock-ins
to reform regional resource configurations based on the history of the region and opportunities emerging from the techno-socio-economic development (Harmaakorpi 2004, 110). However, by renewing and helping to exploit regional resources, dynamic capabilities also play an important role in solving regional lock-ins and reducing socio-institutional inertia.
As the results of Article 1 show even though the regional actors are reasonably well aware of the ongoing change and the prevailing techno-economic paradigm and the dynamic capabilities needed, it is difficult in practice for a region to change its patterns. The old-fashioned hierarchical and bureaucratic ways still prevail in the region, even though the importance of different types of social capital is understood. Article 1 forms a background to understanding the effects and relationships of landscape-level changes to practices and structures concerning ageing.
Article 2 deals with a case that can be considered a niche-level experiment that encounters the existing regime in social and health care. The article describes the clashes that appear when a new business-oriented model, regarded as a niche-level innovation created on the fringe on the regime, is embedded in a public sector environment that is accustomed to working a certain way, but which reflects the regime change. The collisions are embodied, for example, in the controversial expectations of the role of the service user, and they are often related to mental lock-ins creating socio-institutional inertia. However, there may be problems in the collisions due to opposing powers if there is an inability to recognise what the effects of the collisions may lead to. One example of these is the role of the user in the purchaser-producer model in the public sector, and simultaneously fostering emphasis on customer-orientation.
However, the producer-purchaser model in the public sector separates the citizen needs and customer needs. The purchaser represents the needs of citizens as tax payers, but it gains access to the feedback from the actual service users indirectly at best.
Between the levels, there is inevitably some inertia due to cognitive and mental lock-ins that hold onto the stability, but, in times of change, need to be broken. Existing regimes as established systems are also characterised by stability, inertia, lock-in and path dependence.
(Geels et al. 2004; Geels 2010) Actors and organisations are embedded in interdependent networks that create stability through mutual expectations. These cognitive routines may cause blindness, inability to look at other directions outside the regime. (Geels et al. 2004, 7).
This has been blamed on the public sector, in particular, where the present strategies tend to steer the action (see e.g. Marsh and Edwards 2009). Niches that help to bridge the gap between the current regime and the new one can be called pathway technologies (Kemp and Rotmans 2004, 158), but, as a widening concept of innovation supports, the concept could be widened and generalised to bepathway innovations, taking into account that niches can also be other than technologies, such as organisational or administrative innovations, as in the case of Article 2, where there is a question about the embedding of a new organising model in social and health services.
For example, the pressures being exerted because of the ageing of the population influence the thinking and structures of service production. The ageing of the population means both the decreased workforce and the increase in those in need of services. This equation is forcing municipalities to apply completely new operating models to maintain a satisfactory municipal
to reform regional resource configurations based on the history of the region and opportunities emerging from the techno-socio-economic development (Harmaakorpi 2004, 110). However, by renewing and helping to exploit regional resources, dynamic capabilities also play an important role in solving regional lock-ins and reducing socio-institutional inertia.
As the results of Article 1 show even though the regional actors are reasonably well aware of the ongoing change and the prevailing techno-economic paradigm and the dynamic capabilities needed, it is difficult in practice for a region to change its patterns. The old-fashioned hierarchical and bureaucratic ways still prevail in the region, even though the importance of different types of social capital is understood. Article 1 forms a background to understanding the effects and relationships of landscape-level changes to practices and structures concerning ageing.
Article 2 deals with a case that can be considered a niche-level experiment that encounters the existing regime in social and health care. The article describes the clashes that appear when a new business-oriented model, regarded as a niche-level innovation created on the fringe on the regime, is embedded in a public sector environment that is accustomed to working a certain way, but which reflects the regime change. The collisions are embodied, for example, in the controversial expectations of the role of the service user, and they are often related to mental lock-ins creating socio-institutional inertia. However, there may be problems in the collisions due to opposing powers if there is an inability to recognise what the effects of the collisions may lead to. One example of these is the role of the user in the purchaser-producer model in the public sector, and simultaneously fostering emphasis on customer-orientation.
However, the producer-purchaser model in the public sector separates the citizen needs and customer needs. The purchaser represents the needs of citizens as tax payers, but it gains access to the feedback from the actual service users indirectly at best.
Between the levels, there is inevitably some inertia due to cognitive and mental lock-ins that hold onto the stability, but, in times of change, need to be broken. Existing regimes as established systems are also characterised by stability, inertia, lock-in and path dependence.
(Geels et al. 2004; Geels 2010) Actors and organisations are embedded in interdependent networks that create stability through mutual expectations. These cognitive routines may cause blindness, inability to look at other directions outside the regime. (Geels et al. 2004, 7).
This has been blamed on the public sector, in particular, where the present strategies tend to steer the action (see e.g. Marsh and Edwards 2009). Niches that help to bridge the gap between the current regime and the new one can be called pathway technologies (Kemp and Rotmans 2004, 158), but, as a widening concept of innovation supports, the concept could be widened and generalised to bepathway innovations, taking into account that niches can also be other than technologies, such as organisational or administrative innovations, as in the case of Article 2, where there is a question about the embedding of a new organising model in social and health services.
For example, the pressures being exerted because of the ageing of the population influence the thinking and structures of service production. The ageing of the population means both the decreased workforce and the increase in those in need of services. This equation is forcing municipalities to apply completely new operating models to maintain a satisfactory municipal
destabilising as there has been pressure to increase the productivity of the public sector. As the first steps towards a new way of thinking, there has been pressure for new operating models and structures in organising the public social and health care. Places for innovations, that utilise the way of thinking familiar to the private sector and business economy with demands of productivity etc., have emerged.
As the public sector has adapted the way of thinking previously familiar to the private sector, this has destabilised the rule systems of the regime, because of distinctive differences, concerning goals, values and contexts between the sectors. In terms of Geels’, these contrasts and collisions between them can act as “windows for opportunity” for new solutions coming from outside the existing regime, from the niche-level. As seen in the form of various collisions, regarding the innovation in the public sector, it is central to notice that new models applied from another context are not necessarily successful innovations as such, but the focus should be on adjusting those models. However, these collisions can also act as a platform for innovations when opened up, analysed and overcome with “second-level” innovations. In order to realise the innovation potential lying in these collisions and to utilise the “window of opportunity” in times of regime destabilisation, these innovative practices are needed to bridge the gap between old and new thinking.
On the basis of the idea of seeing the collisions as innovation potential, further linked to the idea of various types of distance as a source of innovation, which implies that there is a huge innovation potential in combining different fields of knowledge, I call the inertia breaking here “distance management”, adapted from the “strategic niche management” perspective introduced by Schot et al. (2004) and Kemp et al. (1998), which tries to address the problem between radical novelties and market introduction (see also Schot and Geels 2008). Strategic niche management is a quasi-evolutionary perspective, stating that variation and selection are not blind, but can be directed and shaped to some extent (Schot and Geels 2008). Strategic niche management is based on the idea that technical change may be locked into dominant regimes, and there is under-utilisation of many promising technologies, for example, because of barriers in fitting into existing technologies, government policies and cultural values.
Strategic niche management is the creation and management of niches for promising technologies, and acts as a stepping-stone that facilitates change in a new direction. Besides the creation of protected spaces for the development of promising technologies, it also means making institutional connections and adaptations between companies, researchers and public authorities. (Kemp et al. 1998.)
Distance management utilises the potential of distances in collisions. Collisions are created by processes between and within the levels, but to use the innovation potential lying in the collisions, the collisions between different knowledge-bases and working cultures can also be revealed and even purposefully created – to which the term management refers – by second-level innovations, by which we mean innovative practices that can be either innovations changing the ways ofmaking innovations, or innovations changing the ways ofembedding or implementing innovations. In Article 2, examples of these innovative practices are new models for integrating service into the activities of the service users and the work practices of the health care professionals, as well as fostering bottom-up innovation and including
destabilising as there has been pressure to increase the productivity of the public sector. As the first steps towards a new way of thinking, there has been pressure for new operating models and structures in organising the public social and health care. Places for innovations, that utilise the way of thinking familiar to the private sector and business economy with demands of productivity etc., have emerged.
As the public sector has adapted the way of thinking previously familiar to the private sector, this has destabilised the rule systems of the regime, because of distinctive differences, concerning goals, values and contexts between the sectors. In terms of Geels’, these contrasts and collisions between them can act as “windows for opportunity” for new solutions coming from outside the existing regime, from the niche-level. As seen in the form of various collisions, regarding the innovation in the public sector, it is central to notice that new models applied from another context are not necessarily successful innovations as such, but the focus should be on adjusting those models. However, these collisions can also act as a platform for innovations when opened up, analysed and overcome with “second-level” innovations. In order to realise the innovation potential lying in these collisions and to utilise the “window of opportunity” in times of regime destabilisation, these innovative practices are needed to bridge the gap between old and new thinking.
On the basis of the idea of seeing the collisions as innovation potential, further linked to the idea of various types of distance as a source of innovation, which implies that there is a huge innovation potential in combining different fields of knowledge, I call the inertia breaking here “distance management”, adapted from the “strategic niche management” perspective introduced by Schot et al. (2004) and Kemp et al. (1998), which tries to address the problem between radical novelties and market introduction (see also Schot and Geels 2008). Strategic niche management is a quasi-evolutionary perspective, stating that variation and selection are not blind, but can be directed and shaped to some extent (Schot and Geels 2008). Strategic niche management is based on the idea that technical change may be locked into dominant regimes, and there is under-utilisation of many promising technologies, for example, because of barriers in fitting into existing technologies, government policies and cultural values.
Strategic niche management is the creation and management of niches for promising technologies, and acts as a stepping-stone that facilitates change in a new direction. Besides the creation of protected spaces for the development of promising technologies, it also means making institutional connections and adaptations between companies, researchers and public authorities. (Kemp et al. 1998.)
Distance management utilises the potential of distances in collisions. Collisions are created by processes between and within the levels, but to use the innovation potential lying in the collisions, the collisions between different knowledge-bases and working cultures can also be revealed and even purposefully created – to which the term management refers – by second-level innovations, by which we mean innovative practices that can be either innovations changing the ways ofmaking innovations, or innovations changing the ways ofembedding or implementing innovations. In Article 2, examples of these innovative practices are new models for integrating service into the activities of the service users and the work practices of the health care professionals, as well as fostering bottom-up innovation and including
Another purposeful way to make the distance management, by building multi-actor networks of ageing, is presented in the case of Article 5 in Chapter 9.3. Network formation and new network relationships are also suggested by Kemp et al. (1998).
In both Articles 1 and 2, the question is about breaking the inertia between levels. Besides renewing the regional resource configurations, dynamic capabilities like leadership capability, visionary capability and networking capability are needed to break the lock-ins inside the existing regime. This can also help in reducing the inertia between the landscape-level (and the visible changes in the whole techno-economic paradigm) and the regime. Distance management is a way of reducing the distances inside the niche-level, as well as the distances and inertia between niche- and landscape levels. (see Figure 3).
The main conclusion here is that a change of regime is based on the dynamics between levels, not creating new models as innovations as such, and therefore attention is paid to facilitation tools in the dynamics and overcoming and exploiting the collisions.
Figure 3. Dynamic capabilities and distance management as breakers of inertia and collisions between levels.
Another purposeful way to make the distance management, by building multi-actor networks of ageing, is presented in the case of Article 5 in Chapter 9.3. Network formation and new
Another purposeful way to make the distance management, by building multi-actor networks of ageing, is presented in the case of Article 5 in Chapter 9.3. Network formation and new