Designing and implementing policies for transformative change in Europe: ideas, policy mixes, actors

In the sustainability transitions literature (see, among others: Schot and Steinmueller 2018; Boon and Edler 2018; Kattel and Mazzuccato 2018), the concept of ‘transformative change’ refers to socio-technical system change able to generate an alignment between innovation objectives and contemporary, emerging social and environmental challenges. Identifiable under the umbrella term of ‘grand challenges’ (Kuhlmann and Rip 2014), these latter concern issues such as climate change, pollution, reduction of equality and poverty, and they match the UN Sustainable Development Goals published in 2015, which push for inclusive and sustainable production systems and consumption. It is therefore not surprising that, in recent years, this approach has been acknowledged and supported by the OECD (2015) – then becoming the topic of policy discussions in several contexts, and with the expectation that science, technology and innovation policies are the main instruments with which to meet the aforesaid challenges (see, among others: Steward 2012; Weber and Rohracher 2012). This alignment between innovation objectives and social and environmental challenges is envisaged within the same innovation policy literature that calls for a new, third frame – the so-called transformative change approach to innovation (Schot and Steinmueller 2018). Compared to the previous two frames identified as co-existing and dominant within the innovation policy literature in recent decades (Soete 2007), the basic idea underlying the ‘transformative change’ approach is that innovation is the main driver with which to create a better world of more sustainable and inclusive societies with policies that can lead to higher labor productivity and both economic and green growth (Boon and Edler 2018; Kattel and Mazzuccato 2018). Innovation policies are in fact expected to reduce inequality through the creation of the new job opportunities that both growth and income redistribution can generate. At the same time, this growth needs to be pursued simultaneously with public investment in clean technologies, a cleaner environment, and reduced pollution. A paradigm-shift is thus expected, and it requires a radical change of policy direction from short-term economic growth towards a new form of system-change-oriented policy-making and a holistic approach to innovation policy – now definable as ‘innovation policy 3.0’ (Karo and Kattel 2016). It is now established within the academic literature (see, among others: Casula 2022; Schot and Steinmueller 2018; Smits, Kuhlmann, and Shapira 2010; Fagerberg 2016) that the study of transformative change increasingly requires an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of current policy-making dynamics related to science, technology and innovation. This interdisciplinary perspective – which involves governance, development, and historical studies beyond the traditional economics and innovation ones – is justified by