Socio-technical Transitions and Varieties of Capitalism: Green Regional Innovation and Distinctive Market Niches

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine strategic niche management theory applied to green technology industries in a number of different geographical and economic settings. This is aided by a further quest, to establish firm groundwork for a neo-Schumpeterian theory of economic geography based upon his theorisation of the key roles of innovation and entrepreneurship in regional development. These two perspectives fit together rather seamlessly conceptually and in the empirical case material drawn from the USA and Europe. The results point to the centrality of geographical space in the formation not only of paradigms of regime change in industrial organisation but also of more thoroughgoing transitions from one socio-technical landscape, within which many technological regimes may have been subject to ‘creative destruction’, to another coevolutionary landscape that may be the setting for the next set of, in this case, successive post-hydrocarbon technological regimes. Observation of potential landscape change of the kind in focus in the paper is rare, and the conclusions do not go much beyond the identification of the first key elements from which the grander regime and landscape transitions may be consequent.