Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Innovating Innovation

Electronic data

  • ERSS 2017 Tyfield Innovating innovation PURE

    Rights statement: RCUK warranted

    Accepted author manuscript, 881 KB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Innovating Innovation: Disruptive Innovation in China and the Low-Carbon Transition of Capitalism

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>03/2018
<mark>Journal</mark>Energy Research and Social Science
Volume37
Number of pages9
Pages (from-to)266-274
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date21/10/17
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Disruptive innovation offers significant promise regarding expedited global low-carbon transition, set against currently inadequate efforts. In order to appreciate its significance, however, disruptive low-carbon innovation must be analysed in the light of three key shifts in perspective: to an analysis of system transition and low-carbon innovation itself in terms of power/knowledge; to appraisal of the significance of digital innovation (similarly reconceptualised) and its embryonic convergence with disruptive innovation; and to a geographical focus on innovation happening not (just) in locations usually presumed as leading in hi-tech, but to developing countries and especially China. Indeed, exploring disruptive innovation in this way shows that assenting to the commonplace discourse through which Silicon Valley Tech innovation is identified as 'disruptive' is to conflate problem with solution. Conversely, this approach shows just how significant disruptive innovation is likely to prove to low-carbon transition, effecting a disruption of innovation itself, and thence of capitalism, from which any such transition must ultimately emerge.