Technology Adaptation and IoT: The Role of Actors in Technological Innovation Systems

Abstract

Sustainability and its impact is one of the dominant contemporary societal debates of our times. “Internet of things” (IoT) technology has the potential to establish a more efficient and effective resource usage in many domains and is, therefore, considered a “game-changer” towards a greener future. However, in several domains its adaptation still lacks behind its potential. Within innovation systems, actors act as key drivers of IoT implementation play an important role but are, yet, an under researched area. Consequently, we investigate actor preferences and identify adaptation hurdles in the energy sector. By applying a multi-actor-multi-criteria methodology we find that while governments, grid operators, and public organizations favour fast implementation, households and low-tech firms prefer incremental implementation. Eventually, we make suggestions for future research and how to address the implementation hurdles. These results suggest that governments need to focus on addressing behaviour shift of specific actors to reach higher IoT implantation speed.