Exnovation elsewhere

DiscGo

The Discontinuation of Socio-Technical Systems

DiscGo (2013-2017) is a pioneer project looking at “how socio-technical systems cease to exist and what it means to discontinue incumbent socio-technical systems in active ways”. This project looks at the cases of “DDT ban, incandescent light bulb phase-out, the exit from nuclear, as well as the hesitant, tentative steps towards prohibiting internal combustion engines from use in cars”. The project was conducted by Stephan Kuhlmann and Peter Stegmaier of University of Twente in the Netherlands, as well as by researchers of the French National Institute for Agronomy, Food and Environment (SAD, INRAE).

WAYS-OUT

Governing destabilisation pathways and phase-out: Pluralising knowledge in support of deliberate low-carbon transitions governance and strategies

The research project WAYS-OUT (2020-) is a recent project that aims to create systematic and interdisciplinary knowledge on destabilization processes. It aims to provide insights for transitions policies for purposes of feasible and more ambitious trajectories. The project aims to explore several european cases, including naval industries and/or port cities, meat production and consumption, and cross-border passenger travel (long-distance rail and flight). The project is led by Dr Bruno Turnheim and his colleagues from LISIS (Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés) as well as CIRED (Centre International de Recherche sur l’Environnement et le Développement), France.

COALSTAKE

The Political Economy of Coal Policy: Comparative Analyses of Stakeholder Strategies and Resource Industries' Embeddedness in the International Economy

COALSTAKE (2019-2021) is a swiss research project on the political economy of the coal industry (Aya Kach et al. of universities of Basel and St Gallen, Switzerland, University of Toronto, Canada, and funded by the Swiss Network for International Studies).

Other projects and research

Zahar Koretsky (MUSTS, University of Maastricht) conducts a PhD on technological exnovation. His project, supervised by Harro Van Lente, is titled: « Abandoning technology: Understanding the dynamics of technological trajectories of phase-out ».

Daniel Weiss (Chair of Innovation Management, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) conducts a PhD on trajectories and decline of technological innovation systems, including combustion engine vehicles in various regions.

In the framework of a PhD, Laura van Oers (Utrecht University) studies unmaking at the system level and organisational level  through the concepts of exnovation and unlearning, respectively. Her project, supervised by Giuseppe Feola, Ellen Moors and Hens Runhaar is titled "Exnovating and unlearning capitalism in agri-food systems and organisations: widening sustainability transitions".

The exnovation concept has been highlighted in a book edited by a network of several german researchers: Annika Arnold and Marco Sonnberger (University of Stuttgart), Martin David (UFZ Center of Leipzig) and Gerolf Hanke (Öko-Institut). It is named Innovation – Exnovation; Über Prozesse des Abschaffens und Erneuerns in der Nachhaltigkeitstransformation (2015). 


Leonard Frank conducts a PhD on the destabilization of unsustainable socio-technical regimes with a focus on the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Heiner Schanz (Universität Freiburg) and ass. Prof. Dr. Guiseppe Feola (Utrecht Universiteit).

Other research centers work on exnovation (and other related concepts) in the field of Transitions Studies such as the Group for Sustainability and Technology of ETH (Zurich, Switzerland) or the SPRU-Science Policy Research Unit of the University of Sussex (United Kingdom).