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Sustainable Innovation:
Challenges for Innovation Studies
Govindan Parayil
Professor
Center for Technology, Innovation and Culture
University of Oslo, Norway
[email protected]
Global Climate Change
o The
2007 Nobel Peace Prize to Al Gore &
IPCC
o Nobel citation: “for their efforts to build up
and disseminate greater knowledge about
man-made climate change, and to
lay the
foundations for the measures that
are needed
to counteract such change”
o IPCC has done exemplary work on the
science
of climate change
Global Climate Change
Al Gore has made great effort to disseminate
“greater knowledge” about global warming
 But we are yet to see the laying of the
“foundations for the measures that are needed
to counteract such changes”
 United Nations Climate Change Conference in
Bali, December 3-14, 2007
 One of the key recommendations is about
developing and sharing technologies

Growth and Poverty
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Great concentrations of wealth and growing
prosperity in the world
Still 986 million people were eking out a living on
less than a dollar a day in 2004 (The World Bank)
2.6 billion people subsist on two dollars a day in
2004 (The World Bank)
Development deficit still haunts the star
performers.
Growth and inequality
Development indicators (Source: World Development Indicators 2006)
Country
Population
in 2004
(million)
GDP 2004
(billion $)
Electricity
usage per
capita 2003
(kwh)
Tel landlines
per 1000
people (2004)
Cellular
subscribers
per 1000
(2004)
Internet
users per
1000 (2004)
India
1080
691
435
41
44
32
China
1296
1932
1379
241
258
73
Brazil
184
604
1883
230
357
120
South Africa
45.5
213
4399
103
413
78
Indonesia
218
258
440
46
138
67
South Korea
48
680
7018
103
413
657
Japan
128
4623
7818
460
716
587
Sweden
9
346
15403
767
1034
756
Singapore
4.2
107
7977
440
910
571
Denmark
5.4
241
6602
643
956
696
USA
294
11712
13078
606
617
630
Growth & Poverty
It is not all bad news!
 260 million people escaped extreme
poverty during 1990-2004, mostly in
emerging Asia and hundreds of millions
moved up to middle class status

Growth and Poverty

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China’s growth story during the past three
decades and India’s growth during the past decade.
What about the rising global consumption of food,
oil, minerals, etc.?
All people in the world have an inalienable moral
right to demand a decent standard of living taken
for granted in Europe, North America, Japan and
so on.
Can we grow without leaving unsustainable
carbon and ecological footprint?
Can we do it through sustainable innovations?
EJ/year
World supply
of primary
energy
World Energy
1850-2000
500
450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
Gas
Oil
Coal
Nuclear
Hydro +
Biomass
1850 1875 1900 1925 1950 1975 2000
Year
Hydro+ means
hydropower plus
other renewables
besides biomass
Energy supply grew 20-fold between 1850 and 2000. Fossil fuels
supplied 80% of the world’s energy in 2000. Source: Holdren (2007)
Global greenhouse-gas emissions in 2000
The fossil fuels responsible for the energy emissions were
still supplying 80% of civilization’s energy in 2005
Stern Review (Oct 2006)
Business-as-usual (BAU) forecasts
2004
2030
World
500
750
United States
107
150
Primary energy, exajoules
China
73
140
Electricity, trillion kWh
World
16.5
30
United States
4.0
6.0
China
1.9
4.8
Source: Holdren (2007)
Sustainable Innovation, a question
concerning technology?
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Environmentally and socially creative ways of
expanding productivity and economic
opportunities
Need bold initiatives without leaving massive
ecological footprint on the planet
Functionality, efficiency, aesthetics, cost and so on
are important to engineering design
Sustainability dimension (indicators)
A crucial shift in innovation dynamics
A question concerning technology?
Revisiting the technology debate
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Focus on technology as the problem for
unsustainability is an old one
The Limits to Growth (Meadows, et al.)
Appropriate or alternative technology
movement
Small is Beautiful (E.F. Schumacher)
Our Common Future (Brundtland Commission)
New Innovation Dynamics
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Bridge the gap between science and research with
innovation
Upstream research discoveries need to be
sustainably bridged to downstream applications
Move beyond price signals for market clearance
Private sector will not allocate resources under
extreme uncertainty
A quadruple helix of key stakeholders
Open innovation and user-producer interactions
New Innovation Dynamics
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Innovation and the learning economy
A new system of innovation
STI and DUI mode (Lundvall)
Learning economy and sustainability by
combining Amartya Sen’s concepts of agency,
capability and human development
Development must be seen as an expansion of
substantive freedoms that humans value and
enjoy
Development is not just growth
Innovation and sustainability
Substantive freedoms are essentially the
capabilities humans have to live the kind of lives
they have reason to value
 Freedom from starvation, poverty, and diseases;
the freedom of being literate, able to participate
in political processes, in civil society, to shape
one’s own living conditions; ability to nurture
entrepreneurial skills, etc.
 Shift in focus from “the patient” to “the agent”
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Innovation and sustainability
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Human capabilities rather than resource
endowments are the key to development
Innovation systems approach must be changed to
accept this important facet of development
A new approach to knowledge production and
diffusion
Problem of commodification of knowledge
Bring in sustainability in innovation systems
research
Energy Innovations Central to
Sustainability
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Arguably, the most crucial innovation challenge
facing humanity is in the energy sector
Clean and affordable sources of energy are
essential for reducing poverty and improving
standard of living
What is the major focus of energy policy in rich
countries?
Carbon-based energy innovations are shortsighted
Bio-fuels unsustainable innovation. Why?
Bio-fuels
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Economics of turning food into fuel
Ethics of using food as fuel
Global food crisis
Western countries blaming growing India and
China for the problem
What is the truth?
UN Rome Summit on Global Food Crisis
What sort of bio-fuels can be considered
sustainable?
Non-food biomass, switch grass, jatropha
Energy Innovations
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Increasing energy efficiency
Carbon capture and storage
Solar energy
Synthetic biology (advances in genetic
engineering)
Wind
Geothermal
Fusion
Nuclear?
A Global Compact for Sustainable
Innovation
A concerted global compact to develop and
transfer clean and zero emission technologies
to developing countries
 Any models?
 International innovation system and technology
transfer model that led to the “Green
Revolution”
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Thank you!