News

KSI annual meeting successfull

On June 2, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) hosted the second Annual Conference of the KSI network, a great opportunity to meet.

The day started with plenary sessions in the Board Room of the former East Indies Company, symbol of the major transition of the 17th century. Among others Jan Rotmans spoke of KSI's achievements.

Then there were two rounds of workshops. Under themes, such as 'Managing transitions?', 'The practical use of historical insight' or 'Agency in transitions', researchers discussed their research designs. Each group also sought solutions for the practical problem of the Amsterdam harbour.

The conference concluded with a plenary session in which Prof. dr. Dymph van den Boom, KSI Board member and Dean of the Fac. of Soc. & Behav. Sci., provoked some discussion of what it means to establish - as KSI wants to do - an interdisciplinary field.

Over dinner an award was attributed for the best advice to Bram Breure, triggering a wonderful party, which would last untill well beyond midnight.

Some of the presentations are available on the web site

'De Vijfde Verdieping' discussed transition monitoring

The topic of the 5th discussion forum of the Competence Centre for Transitions last June was 'transition monitoring in research and practice'.

The forum explicitly chose the viewpoint of policy makers and managers who try to influence transitions in their activities. After the kick-off lecture by prof. Rotmans in which the many theoretical challenges were presented for monitoring at the level of projects, programmes and the society at large, the practitioners' point of view was expressed by Frank Dietz, John Weebers and Frank Wijnands. The lively debate after the various presentations was centered on 3 issues:

1) the tensions between multiple purposes of monitoring (learning, promoting change and external accountability), 2) how to get relevant information (as goals are continuously changing and impact is hard to measure) and 3) how to combine a birds-eye perspective with a situated perspective.

A report of the session 'de Vijfde Verdieping' (in Dutch) can be found here online. The next session will be on Oct. 10 2006.

Post-graduate course on Transition Management

Transtion knowledge being a young research field, as yet no MSc. programme exists. To establish one is the ambitious goal of the three scientific KSI directors. A first step in this direction is the recent creation of a first post-graduate course. It is a 7-day course running from September to December 2006, to be held at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.

The course has been developed for transition professionals from the (semi) public sector. For example programme managers, senior project leaders, or senior policy advisors, who try to realise societal changes or transitions in their daily work.

All important aspects for the practical application of transition management will be discussed. Using recent examples from the experience of the participants and the teachers, the theory will be translated to practice. Most teachers are in the KSI network, some from outside. They all share the conviction that science can serve practice in solving societal problems.

This year's course is fully booked, but you can now enrol for 2007. For more information, dowload the brochure.

KSI Workshop on Health Care: diagnostics

Recently a new research programme was launched, on transitions and system innovations in the Dutch health care. John Grin and Jan Rotmans initiated this programme as part of the KSI network (see Newsletter # 2).

On June 29th, 2006 several participating KSI researchers convened to elaborate the guiding principles for this program and mutually align their projects. It was agreed that this program should contribute substantially to the current research and to the public debate, by a focus on diagnostics of persistent problems in the health care sector, on their root causes and on the success factors for innovative solutions. Two projects will start from a systemic analysis; two others will depart from an actor perspective. All projects aim to discover how structure facilitates or blocks innovative action.

Other guiding principles are focussing on (action) research geared at solutions with a high system innovative potential, analysing current practices and social experiments (whether they knew success or failure), working in true partnership with stakeholders and creating a living body of knowledge within KSI for this topic.

All participants expressed their ambition for shared focus, joint efforts and structural knowledge sharing. Together, they will try and set up an international website for comparative analysis of problems and trends in health care systems.

Patient participation in health research; a new step within the transition of the health care sector?

The health care sector is in transition. It is becoming more and more demand-driven, patients and patient organisations getting their say. A new aspect is that these groups are now also starting to influence research in the sector.

Traditionally, experts decided on the direction research would take, be it bottom-up, through scientists in research organisations, or top down, through scientists in funding organisations. This is changing. During the last decade, however, an increasing number of initiatives involve patients in decision making on national or institutional health research agendas. These niche experiments now seem to impact the network level. Although no radical change is expected in the short term, visions are changing and a new consciousness is dawning. It is well possible the health research field is starting to join the transition of the health care sector.
>>read more (in Dutch)

SWOME

As announced earlier, on October 12, in the Hague (Ministry of VROM) SWOME will organise its bi-annual Market Day on sustainability research. At that occasion, especially PhD students will present their projects and discuss them amongst themselves as well as with senior researchers and policy makers.

This time, there will be a particular focus on transition research. KSI has happily accepted SWOME's invitation to act as a co-organiser, and many researchers from the KSI network will present themselves. In addition, policy makers will discuss their experiences ad the lessons they learnt with senior researchers. The programme may be found on the KSI website.

Crossthinking about sustainability: Meat

KSI organises a series of debates on the topic of "Cross-thinking about Sustainability" together with IT-IHDP, Felix Meritis and Trouw. Danielle Nierenberg (Worldwatch Institute, Washington, USA) will talk about rethinking the global meat industry, on October 5.

Read more on the KSI website.

Science

KSI project III.3c with Ruth Mourik

Project III.3c addresses the question how actors can maximise the impact of their transition experiments. For example, how to construct niches, how to interfere with the system and its regime, how to optimise learning processes, how to interact with networks, or how to deal with expectations. This will result in a reflexive tool that can guide and evaluate the quality of transition experiments. Geert Verbong leads the project.

Dr. Ruth Mourik (32) joined the project in January 2006. She is going to develop competition kits to ensure that a transition experiment will optimally contribute to a system innovation. In principle the systems to be studied will be agriculture, mobility and energy.

She will operate in tandem with Rob Raven with whom she recently switched jobs for 2 days a week. Besides KSI they now both work at Energie Centrum Nederland (ECN). He brings in the theory. She brings in her 4-year experience of translating knowledge to practice. This is exactly what she prefers doing, ever since her studies. True science-fiction fan, she studied Antropology and Sociology (UvA) and obtained a MSc. in European Science-Technology Studies (UM). During her PhD subject in Technology and Society (TU/e) she discovered that technology does not necessarily dominate society. The subject, risk perceptions in different arenas about topics connected with scientific uncertainties, led her naturally to her position at ECN as experience expert. Her personal challenge in this KSI project is to focus more on theory, and to incorporate the Strategic Niche Management (SNM) theory into the toolkits.

Ruth would define herself as a perfectionist, persevering, idealistic, and creative mother. Besides work she also feels the need to photograph, to design her own furniture, and to ride her own horse. Actually, she has nothing left to desire! A farmhouse, maybe?

Practice

Transitie startpagina in de lucht

From now on, all links concerning transitions and System Innovations can be found on one page:
http://transitie.startpagina.nl
If you wish to add something, please contact Arjan Klopstra (A.Klopstra at senternovem.nl) at the Competence Centre for Transitions (CCT).

Transition management to solve the problem of air pollution by particulate matter?

Concentrations have been decreasing for decades, but today the problem is causing more difficulties than ever in the Netherlands: fine dust or particulate matter. Only recently DRIFT made a somewhat headstrong analysis for ONRI, PSIBouw and Habiforum, which aims broader than usual. It gives an outlook on a process with all clash-related sectors and can lift the discussion on particulate matter to a strategic level. For KSI the research approach, based on multiple domains and associated regimes, may be particularly relevant.

The report 'De fijnstofclash' argues that the knowledge and interventions of today will fall short of banning the problem within ten to fifteen years.

On September 21st the report has been presented for a broad audience in the Future Centre Mobilion of the Ministery of Transport, Public Works and Water Management.

Are visions in system innovations useful for sustainable crop production?

At Wageningen UR (Plant Research Division - PPO), the so-called Programme 400 on System Innovation in Crop Production has been running since 2003. Led by dr. José Vogelesang (meanwhile co-director of TransForum), some 35 experts from WUR have co-operated with farmers, water managers, environmental groups and other stakeholders to design system innovations for both open and covered cultivations. The programme has yielded visions, which were then translated into both system innovative projects and into knowledge questions for future WUR research. John Grin (UvA; KSI) provided methodical guidance.

Recently, the role played by visions in this programme was evaluated. Researchers and stakeholders were interviewed. Conclusions include that:

• visions developed for a specific (regional) context had more convincing power and were more readily transferred to other contexts than more 'generic' visions';
• visions were particularly useful to provide new orientation to mid-term research planning;
• producing visions as both an analytic and a strategic activity requires dedicated competences;
• visions may inspire novel solutions also to other policy problems than those for which they were designed.

See: Pieter de Wolf, Abco de Buck en John Grin (2006). Werken aan de toekomst. Beschrijving en evaluatie van het toekomstbeeldenproject in de plantaardige sectoren. Wageningen, Praktijkonderzoek Plant & Omgeving B.V. PPO Publicatie nr. 351.

The VROM system innovation network

In June, CCT organised a meeting at the Ministry of VROM. Why? To explore whether it would be useful to create a forum for frequent exchange amongst civil servants working on system innovation and transitions. After presentations by John Grin (KSI) and Frank Dietz (Energy Transition), discussion followed. It focused on the dilemmas encountered when people are working on such innovative issues as system innovations and transitions, while embedded in organisations and networks whose rules and routines often reflect more traditional policies.

Although many participants would appreciate regular exchange, differences in language and backgrounds appeared to complicate discussion. Therefore, CCT will elaborate ways and means to transcend these difficulties and offer some common ground to discuss experiences between policy makers in the front lines of transition policy.

Networking day 'Grensverleggend Vernieuwen 2006: Beweging Borgen'

On November 17 KSI will participate in the networking day 'Grensverleggend Vernieuwen'. It addresses the question how to ensure that a change process continues, once it is iniated. We expect about 100 partipants, practicioners actively involved in transition processes all over the Netherlands. Co-organisers are the Competence Centrum Transitions, Innovatienetwerk, TransForum, Leven met Water, de Energietransitie, Transitie Biodiversiteit, PSIBouw, Wegen naar de Toekomst and TNO.

>>more info

Column

New Sustainability Era? Thrilling!

Bottom up

Summerschool: How to pick what fruit?

From the 21st to the 23rd of July, the first KSI-summerschool was held in Andelst. In contrast to the KSI-winterschool, this was a bottom-up event, organised by and especially for PhD-students.

Under the moniker "How to pick what fruit?", the main theme of the summerschool was "Methodology". The programme featured a focus group workshop, poster sessions, senior researchers giving presentations, a debate and much more.

Of course the surroundings - a picturesque orchard with swimming pool - helped greatly in making this a succes. The informal atmosphere lent itself very well for discussions about problems and pleasures encountered in PhD research.

Roos Spanjers

Roos Spanjers (27) studied biology, although she would have preferred medicine. Perhaps this explains why she specialised in Public Health. She now prepares a PhD at the dept. Biology and Society of the Athena Institute at the VU, where she studied too. When she was solicited, November 2005, she accepted because of the understanding for her health problems and because of the particular subject: The potential role of NGO's in the transition towards more sustainable technology innovations in the health sector. Roos' work is basically KSI project III.6.

She is now answering the first two research questions: 1) What is a sustainable health care system, and 2) how sustainable is the Dutch system, and in particular the pharmaceutical subsystem? It is remarkable how little information exists on sustainability and health care. Usually only the economic aspect is treated. Sometimes also the social aspect, as quality of care. Rarely the environmental aspect, the effect of population growth on the planet being controversial.

In the future she would like to work in Africa as a consultant for an NGO, analysing the problems in their context and finding solutions. And secretly she hopes to adapt her favourite book, Girlfriend in a coma, one day for the screen.

Qualities that help Roos at her work are creativity, ability to make links across scale levels, and social skills. She would like to learn to be more disciplined, and to excel in English. But the funniest thing to know about her is that she has a bed in her office…for her back aches, so she claims!

Mattijs Taanman

Mattijs Taanman (27), works on the KSI project II.8, Transition Monitoring, and was appointed at DRIFT and TNO in April 2005. It was not really a logical choice to become PhD student. After his study Technology and Society at the TU Eindhoven, and his prize-winning thesis on Innovation management in the energy sector, he wanted to put his knowledge into practice. But when a PhD position about experiments caught his eye, this was too tempting not to apply. Finally Suzanne (see newsletter 3) got the job, but Mattijs was offered another subject, transition monitoring. He accepted because of the team of 10 simultaneously starting PhD students at DRIFT and the involvement of TNO.

Project II.8 started out as an independent PhD study, but in the meantime it has grown to include a range of Testing Grounds, whereby KSI is monitoring a few other BSIK programmes within Acht-voor-Ruimte. For Mattijs this is an opportunity; he suddenly has a range of cases to build his monitoring framework on. He sees it as a challenge to come up with a methodology that other people can use and adapt to their own transition project. It should be flexible and participative.

His knowledge about historical transitions is an advantage, his multidisciplinary background too. But it is sometimes felt as a drawback not to have one clear starting point. Mattijs can work for a considerable period in a seemingly chaotic way, and finally unravel a maximum of information.

In a professional future Mattijs would like to participate in a full transition process for a company or NGO, in a particular sector, preferably energy. Although if he gets a chance, he may wander off for a few months into some steppe or desert…

Publications

John Grin, Maarten Hajer & Wytske Versteeg (red.), 2006.
Meervoudige democratie. Ervaringen met vernieuwend bestuur. Amsterdam: Aksant
De hoofdstukken van Anne Loeber, Jan van Tatenhove en John Grin en hebben betrekking op systeeminnovaties en transities.

Olsthoorn, Xander & Wieczorek, Anna.J. (Eds) (2006)
Understanding Industrial Transformation - Views from different disciplines. Leusden: Springer.

Geels, F.W. and Deuten, J.J., 2006
'Local and global dynamics in technological development: A socio-cognitive perspective on knowledge flows and lessons from reinforced concrete
Science and Public Policy, Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 265-275

Geels, F.W. and Kemp, R., 2006
Transitions, transformations and reproduction: Dynamics of socio-technical systems
M. McKelvey and M. Holmén (eds.)
Flexibility and Stability in Economic Transformation
New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 227-256

Raven, R.P.J.M. (2006)
Towards Alternative Trajectories? Reconfigurations in the Dutch Electricity Regime
in: Research Policy, 35 (4), 581-595

  Agenda