The geography of eco-innovations and sustainability transitions: A systematic comparison

1 Introduction

The development and diffusion of innovations aimed at reducing environmental burdens are essential to make socio-technical systems more sustainable (Boons and McMeekin 2019; Smith et al. 2010). Against this background, scientific research has come to increasingly address issues around desirable, i.e. sustainability-focused, innovation (Barbieri et al. 2016; Rennings 2000) and systemic transitions (Köhler et al. 2019; Markard et al. 2012). In the political sphere, this “orientation towards [a] directionality of innovation” (Edler and Boon 2018, p. 433) has led to initial steps towards a paradigm shift, where transformative innovation policies complemented the prevailing focus on economic growth and competitiveness (Schot and Steinmueller 2018; Weber and Rohracher 2012).

During the early years of this normative turn in innovation studies and innovation policy (Sjøtun and Njøs 2019; Uyarra et al. 2019), the spatial dimension of innovation-based and transformative change has remained largely unaddressed. Recently, however, a number of conceptual and empirical studies have started to provide useful insights on spatial conditions, their interdependencies and the resulting geographical unevenness of environmental sustainability (Boschma et al. 2017; Cooke 2011; Gibbs and O’Neill 2014; Grillitsch and Hansen 2019; Strambach 2017).

In this paper, we will suggest that while geographical research on this topic draws on multiple traditions, two of those stand out as particularly important for the development of the current disciplinary discourse. On the one hand, a perspective that emphasises the constructive potential of environmentally oriented innovations, i.e. eco-innovations, and their enabling factors, building on research on innovation systems and industrial path development (e.g. Cainelli et al. 2012; Costantini et al. 2013; Perruchas et al. 2020). On the other hand, a perspective that highlights the need for systemic sustainability transitions through a wide diffusion and application of eco-innovative products, processes and practices. This line of research emphasises the resistance and obstacles to change and is also more critical of the positive potential of eco-innovation as such (e.g. Binz et al. 2020; Coenen et al. 2012; Truffer et al. 2015).

Due to this in a way fundamental differences, the two perspectives do not integrate naturally and the productive integration of findings from either side remains below its potential. More recently, however, some research attempts have been undertaken towards that end, such as work on green industrial and technological path development in regions (Grillitsch and Hansen 2019; Trippl et al. 2020), the green economy and green growth (Capasso et al. 2019; Gibbs and O’Neill 2014) or (regional) lead markets (Losacker and Liefner 2020; Quitzow et al. 2014).

Against this background, this paper aims to make a twofold contribution. First, it will seek to empirically corroborate that there are indeed two distinct bodies of literature that, in practice, overlap little. Second, it will attempt to characterise both directions of research in order to better understand why they have had little correspondence with each other, while also exploring what benefits might accrue if such integration efforts were pursued more proactively. Quite evidently, the two mentioned domains of discourse draw on different research traditional and hence come with different methodological and epistemological assumptions.

Although the geographical literature concerned with sustainability transitions does not deny that eco-innovations and their enablers are central part of transition dynamics, it focuses on co-evolving institutional arrangements, which can be both obstacles and facilitators of socio-technical change. With a view to its perspectives on space, research on the geography of transitions follows relational and constructivist approaches of social and economic processes that it conceives as driven by multi-scalar relations of actor dynamics (Binz et al. 2020; Miörner and Binz 2021; Zolfagharian et al. 2019). Moreover, transition studies conceptually construct sectoral change and mainly uses qualitative case studies to uncover relevant factors that enhance or impede transitions towards sustainability (Hansen and Coenen 2015; Mattes et al. 2015; Strambach and Pflitsch 2020). This literature is therefore interested in the processes after a potentially environmentally friendly solution, stressing its societal importance, is implemented, i.e. it mainly looks at the application and demand side of (non-technological) innovations as well as their diffusion across space (van den Berge et al. 2019).

The geographical discourse on eco-innovations is empirically and conceptually more heterogeneous but united by the fact that it finds its origin in innovation economics (Antonioli et al. 2016; Cooke 2012; Sotarauta and Suvinen 2019). As such, it regularly takes a more resource- and (growth) potential-oriented perspective and conceives institutions as enabling factors rather than as an element of inhibiting regimes. Such research on the geography of eco-innovations usually tends to quantitatively assess spatial determinants of green innovations, considering them a key prerequisite of technological and industrial change towards sustainability. Accordingly, much of the literature focuses on green technologies, while other types of eco-innovation that relate to social or organisational change receive little attention (Cainelli et al. 2015; Cooke 2012; Perruchas et al. 2020). Put differently, much of this literature starts from a territorial supply-side perspective on technological and industrial development and, in doing so, tends to maintain a more traditional concept of space as composed of political reference areas in which relevant institutions are constituted and resources made available. Importantly, this explicitly includes the discourse emerging in continuation of the (regional) innovation systems literature. However, it often lacks explicit conceptual references to broader sectoral changes, whose occurrence it documents (Antonioli et al. 2016; Horbach 2014; Krupoderova and Portnov 2020).

Despite the abovementioned differences in research objects, methods and concepts, research on the geography of eco-innovations and sustainability transitions do not represent opposing poles and are not fundamentally irreconcilable. Rather, both directions of research are two relevant poles in a broader discourse on the geographies of innovation that is far from exclusively limited to them. Moreover, researchers from both fields agree on the systemic character of eco-innovative or transformational processes, which are driven by (networks of) actors, institutions as well as material artefacts (Dawley 2014; Markard et al. 2012; Rohe and Chlebna 2021).

As mentioned above, the geographical debate is far from restricted to these two domains of discussion, nor are these domains mutually exclusive. Nonetheless, they are determinant elements of the current discourse that shape its dynamics and directionality. Against this background, their apparent lack of integration seems surprising and deserves further investigation. Accordingly, this paper does not aim to provide a comprehensive literature analysis. Instead, it seeks to address the specific question whether two central streams of literature interface properly and, if not, why so. Subsequently, it seems to establish the potential benefit that could result if the situation were improved.

Empirically, we approach the first step of this analysis by classifying current papers on the basis of keywords that are characteristic for either presumed direction of research. Since this approach is based on assumptions, the aim is to test whether a keyword-driven search strategy built on qualitative scoping can demonstrate that there are two directions of research which are relevant in absolute terms and roughly on a par with each other. Furthermore, we determine whether both field indeed overlap little.

Concluding, the paper will underline the benefit of integrating geographical research perspectives, following the call of Binz et al. (2020, p. 3), who see “the need to combine the topical concerns […] with a more serious engagement with current theorizing in human geography and related spatial theories in the social sciences”. In line with this, this paper does not solely aim to take stock of specific perspectives within the geography of innovations, but also points to the importance of linking with related discourses.

The structure of the paper is as follows. After characterising conceptual and theoretical features of geographical work on eco-innovations and sustainability transitions, we outline the methodology applied to identify studies based on keywords and subsequently review them in detail. The results sections shed light on similarities, differences and complementarities between the two research streams regarding their conceptual perspectives on institutions, technologies and actors. Finally, we document the necessity to further reconcile innovation- and transformation-oriented perspectives in order to better understand spatial dynamics against the backdrop of grand societal challenges.

2 A first overview: Geographical work on eco-innovations and sustainability transitions

Not least since a ‘spatial turn’ in eco-innovation oriented and transitions research has emerged, the “inattention to space” (Gibbs and O’Neill 2014, p. 212) is increasingly being challenged, paving the way for necessary geographic debates (Coenen 2015; Rinkinen et al. 2016). Specifically, it has been recognised that eco-innovation and transformation processes, as well as their heterogeneity and disparity (Coenen et al. 2012), imperatively requires an inclusion and understanding of the spatial context. Surprisingly, however, the existing geographical literature remains quite heterogeneous, although eco-innovations, which include (non-) technological measures that lead to a reduction of environmentally harmful impacts, are considered a necessary condition for systemic transformations (Kemp et al. 2019; Rennings 2000).

Within economic geography, work on sustainability and innovations has come to interface from two different directions in recent years. On the one hand, research on the geography of innovation, which tends to have a positive view on innovation, has increasingly focused on sustainability issues. In doing so, it has translated the concept of innovation systems rather directly to the field of sustainability-oriented innovation. In this perspective, eco-innovation creates positive momentum, with innovators being drivers of change. On the other hand, the geographical literature on sustainability transitions has become more attentive to space and begun to conceive systemic changes as a multi-scalar endeavour. This research field focuses on transformative change more comprehensively, assigning much importance to the diffusion of environmentally friendly innovation. While it does not dispute the transformative power of novelty, it tends to focus more at the detrimental effects of resistance (to adoption), and how those can be overcome.

Naturally, the existing geographical literature on sustainability-oriented innovations is not made up of these strands alone, nor is it apodictically possible to assign a specific paper to either domain. Given how they come together from such characteristically opposite, yet not opposing, dimensions and still not interface broadly, they seem a most obvious candidate for further analysis.

3 Identification of literature for in-depth review

The rationale for further reviewing the literature on the geography of eco-innovations and sustainability transitions in-depth, is to provide better and clearer insights into these related strands of research. To this end, we will first examine whether the abovementioned premise of a diverse strand of literature oscillating between two converging yet still clearly distinguishable poles or perspectives can be substantiated in practice.

Although this in-depth review represents a structured, transparent and replicable procedure, we are aware of the limitations of this methodical procedure. In essence, information retrieval is strongly dependent on the search strategy, which is influenced to a certain extent by the researchers’ scientific background. The same applies to the assessment of the relevance and analysis of the obtained literature. In addition, differences in language and publication types, for example, can lead to some relevant contributions not being included in the analysis (Snyder 2019; Tranfield et al. 2003). To minimise a biased selection and analysis, the literature review therefore follows in principle the systematic approach illustrated in Figure 1 (see also Petticrew and Roberts 2006).

Figure 1:

Procedure for identifying the relevant literature (author’s own figure based on Kivimaa et al. (2019)).

To test whether relevant, mutually exclusive corpora of literature can be identified, we started by compiling keywords commonly considered as characteristic terminology of either eco-innovation or transitions research. To not entirely rely on intuition, the first draft of this list was corroborated and amended based on a limited literature review drawing on key contributions such as those cited in the above, introductory section. Technically, both search queries consist of two parts (see Table A1 in the Appendix). In the suggested domain of eco-innovation literature, we expect terms around the central notions of ‘innovation’ and ‘development’ that reflect this literature’s assumed focus on economic development as a core objective and innovation as its driver. For this purpose, a detailed thesaurus of search terms, including frequent synonyms for eco-innovation, was developed based on Rennings (2000) seminal paper and a review by Barbieri et al. (2016). Additionally, notions like ‘branching’ or ‘entrepreneurship’ denote specific, long standing strands of research that we have – by means of assumption – attributed to this broader field.

Conversely, the known core characteristic of the emerging geography of transitions literature is reflected in the core notions of ‘transition’ and ‘socio-technical change’ as well as a number of others characteristic for the field, like ‘technological innovation system’ or ‘multi-level perspective’. These keywords were compiled based on reviews by Markard et al. (2012), Kivimaa et al. (2019) and Hansmeier et al. (2021). As outlined above, it is evident that the more clearly delineated sustainability transitions literature would use a more specific set of vocabulary. What is less clear, in contrast, is whether this would prevent it from using the rather generic terminology by us attributed to the ‘eco-innovation’ domain as well. In that sense, the analysis was consciously designed to test whether both domains are from this terminological perspective truly distinct from each other, or whether the literature on socio-technical transition can already be considered fully integrated into the geographical discourse at large.

To avoid the inclusion of non-geographical literature, both search strategies are complemented with a concise yet comprehensive list of geography-specific terms such as “spatial”, “local”, “regional” and “international” which serve as a necessary condition for any paper to be included in the corpus of reference for this study (Binz et al. 2020; Boschma et al. 2017; Krupoderova and Portnov 2020).

Using combinations of these terms, titles, abstracts and keywords of documents listed in both the Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) databases were sourced. Since document types such as books, conference proceedings and reports are underrepresented in Scopus and WoS (Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2016), the search only included peer-reviewed journal articles. As of June 23, 2021, a total of four search strings – two databases, two broader directions of research – were performed. These initial selections comprised 239 Scopus-listed articles (WoS: 197) related to the geography of eco-innovation and 352 Scopus-listed articles (WoS: 315) related to the geography of sustainability transitions.

The next step involved the exclusion of irrelevant work leading to adjusted selections. By screening the abstracts – or, in case of ambiguity, the entire study – those articles were excluded that had neither a distinct geographical focus, nor a connection to the broader eco-innovations or sustainability transitions research fields respectively.^[1] The exclusion of duplicates reduced the preliminary number of studies by 84 and 135 respectively (see Figure 1).

Due to the literatures’ heterogeneity, not all relevant studies could be identified with the initial search queries. Following the approach of Kivimaa et al. (2019), further articles were searched by using forward and backward citations. As this step builds on established work (Petticrew and Roberts 2006), the focus was on the 15 most cited articles in each field. As a second search strategy, the ‘connected papers’ visual tool^[2] was used, which draws on the literature graph of Ammar et al. (2018) and identifies papers that are strongly connected to a given paper. Unlike building a citation tree, the algorithm uses co-citation and bibliographic coupling, thus clustering similar papers together. This approach was again applied for the 15 most cited papers of each field. The final selection for the research on the geography of eco-innovations comprises a total of 79 journal articles, and that for research on the geography of sustainability transitions to 136 journal articles. 26 papers can be assigned to both strands of literature (see also Supplementary Data for overview of the articles).

When looking at the development over time (see Figure 2), it becomes apparent that both lines of research started to emerge in the late 2000s. While the years after 2009 were shaped by a rather moderate development, the annual publication output for the geographical literature on eco-innovation has risen sharply since 2017. A very similar dynamic is also evident in the literature on the geography of sustainability transitions, in line with the overall development of transition studies (Hansmeier et al. 2021; Köhler et al. 2019). More importantly, the analysis confirms our initial hypotheses that much journal articles can only be assigned to one of the two perspectives, despite a rather broad search strategy.

Figure 2:

Number of articles published by year and research stream.

4 Geographical perspectives on key elements influencing innovative and transformative change towards sustainability

Considering that spatial conditions have a crucial impact on eco-innovation and the transition to a green economy and sustainability in general (Binz et al. 2020; Boschma et al. 2017; Horbach 2014), some previous work has already reviewed the relevant geographical literature. However, these reviews only address either the geographical literature on eco-innovation (Krupoderova and Portnov 2020), innovation in the context of green growth (Capasso et al. 2019) or sustainability transitions (Hansen and Coenen 2015). Since our text-based analysis has corroborated the existence of two still noticeably distinct directions of geographical literature on eco-innovative and transformative change, the following sections will explore in more detail whether our initial priors on these streams characteristics actually apply, and, if so, to what degree and in what ways.

Unlike Capasso et al. (2019) and Hansen and Coenen (2015), for example, who emphasise similar factors around policies, institutions, technological capabilities, markets or physical resources, we assume differences in perspective with regard to key systemic elements of institutions, actors and technologies. There are two main reasons for this. On the one hand, the aforementioned categories partly overlap, for example, policies may well be considered formal institutions (Capasso et al. 2019). On the other hand, the categories on actors, institutional and technological elements help to explain the spatial development dynamics of systemic change towards sustainability without explicitly referring to individual actions (micro-level perspective) or developments at the macro-level such as political or economic systems (Köhler et al. 2019).

5 Discussion

Covering more than a decade of numerous conceptual and empirical contributions, this paper compared two important directions within the broader literature on sustainability-oriented innovation. By conducting keyword-based searches based on assumptions regarding the terminology either domain would use, the analyses confirm that there are indeed two large bodies of literature which can be identified and also delineated based on a divergent use of terminology – since the number of studies mixing terminology from both domains remains rather limited. Nevertheless, this does not limit comparability; rather, despite heterogeneity, complementarities emerge along the three previously mentioned categories of analysis of actors, institutions and technologies.

A first aspect concerns the question by which actors innovative and transformative processes can – and should primarily – be driven. Here, the two broader literature directions put different emphases on the role of specific actors. Established but rather diverse eco-innovation research tends to at least equally consider opportunities for change within existing path dependencies and actor coalitions (e.g. ‘path renewal’) (Cooke 2012; MacKinnon et al. 2019b), whereas transition research tends to regard the overt majority of incumbents as obstructive (‘regime’) and hence to suggest that radical change be driven by actors outside established regime structures (Fuenfschilling and Binz 2018; Späth and Rohracher 2012). Although eco-innovation research does include inquiry into the conditions under which new paths emerge (e.g. Strambach and Pflitsch 2020; Trippl et al. 2020), there is still a lack of differentiated empirical findings, particularly on the role and relationship of new and established actors.

More recently, the emergence of research on (change) agency demonstrates that there is indeed a possible field of convergence (e.g. Sjøtun 2020; Sotarauta et al. 2021). More and more empirical findings suggest that roles in the development and use of environmentally friendly solutions are less clear-cut than assumed in earlier transition studies (e.g. Santoalha and Boschma 2021; van den Berge et al. 2019) and also conceptual contributions tend to increasingly suggest that change is neither always primarily, nor most successfully driven by complete regime outsiders. Accordingly, we believe that an integration of insights from both research directions could help to develop a more inclusive perspective on the diversity of actor roles and their respective capacity to develop conditions for change agency. It could provide more clarity about the influence of the diverse agents of change we observe in empirical reality.

A second dimension of inquiry for which such an integration could be beneficial concerns the question which role future conceptual frameworks should attribute to institutional barriers of eco-innovation and transitions. In the geographical literature on eco-innovations, optimistic assumptions prevail concerning the potential enabling impact that supportive framework conditions and institutional setting can have on actor behaviour. As common within economics and business administration studies, eco-innovation tends to be framed as the outcome of (more or less) rational, entrepreneurial choices contingent on regulation, policies, markets, and institutions (e.g. Antonioli et al. 2016; Horbach and Rammer 2018). This, however, falls short of acknowledging the complexity of an empirical reality in which technological and psychological path dependencies often at least superimpose any rational consideration. Future research in that area will therefore have to better consider the effects of sector or technology-specific institutions as well as to incorporation the social and organisational dimensions of innovation which are often better acknowledged in transition studies. In this endeavour, it could benefit from relevant insights concerning institutional arrangements that drive or prevent sustainable change, not least with a view to the role of the demand side, the essential role of societal actors and the socio-psychological fabric into which all meaningful transformation will have to be embedded. Eventually, this would also require a shift in analytical perspective as institutions cannot simply be understood as pure spatially-bound contextual factor but require a multi-level, relational perspective on geography. However, it would not necessarily require an outright turn towards purely qualitative approaches. Instead, it could help nurture an effort to develop a more informed and conceptually better justifiable strand of quantitative analysis.

A third dimension of inquiry concerns the role of regions’ structural characteristics with regard to technologies and knowledge. Having added space to sustainability, the geographical transitions literature focuses quite prevalently on the role of actors in specific niches. More traditional aspects of the regional environment in which these actors perform their processes of experimentation, like factor endowment, physical and institutional infrastructure or (relative) location tend to be considered less systematically. Although, for example, Grillitsch and Hansen (2019) have looked at different types of regions, the question which particular opportunities or challenges, for example, regions with an mature technological and industrial base face during transitions remains unconsidered.

Arguably the existing literature on the geography of eco-innovation provide many relevant insights which could inform future inquiries in transition studies. While the methodological and epistemological may vary, general insights into the relevance or irrelevance of certain aspects for specific processes may still be valuable. Many basic relationships have been empirically proven with sufficient certainty that their basic message can be adopted rather than risking relearning what is already known.

In summary, our analysis suggests that the sustainability transitions literature could profit from the established eco-innovation discourse about as much as the other way round. In recent years, some cross-over studies on regions’ role of driving green innovation and restructuring have begun to pursue the avenue of inquiry, but much further ground remains to be covered, in particular with a view to the core field of inquiry that puts sustainability-oriented innovations centre stage.

6 Conclusions

As complex and multi-scalar processes, eco-innovative and transformational change require additional and multidisciplinary research efforts to develop a better understanding of and more precise insights into territorial and sectoral interdependencies. Against this background, this paper has demonstrated how future efforts could profit from a better integration of insights from two main strands of literature that shape a substantial share of the disciplinary discourse today. While acknowledging a lack of connectivity as well as differences in substance, we demonstrate that those key lines of research are neither conceptually nor epistemologically irreconcilable at a fundamental level.

Despite the diverse and increasingly converging work, further research is also needed to promote the integration of an in part still rather fragmented discourse. While the benefit of integration is already obvious for the existing discourses around agency, institutions and technologies, we expect that it will gain additional relevance in those on individual and psychological characteristics that are only just emerging (e.g. Huggins and Thompson 2021). These are also increasingly coming into focus due to the growing need for non-technical innovations and social adaptation processes. Against the background of the importance of actors’ converging interests and values, newer methodological approaches such as the socio-technical configuration analysis seem helpful to transcend and unduly simplistic divide between quantitative and qualitative research (Heiberg et al. 2022).

Beyond arriving at a better conceptual understanding of ongoing spatial transition processes, our findings also suggest that a denser mutual recognition of both directions of research could enable better and more robust policy advice, e.g. with a view to how regions can steer and enable change towards sustainability (see also Bugge et al. 2022; Tödtling et al. 2020).

With a view to limitations, one important aspect is that this study’s design and stated ambition prevented it from covering the current discourse in economic geography comprehensively. While this has not been the ambition, (economic) geography remains to explore whether the green transition exacerbates or mitigates spatial inequalities, i.e. whether it improves lagging regions potential to catch up or the opposite. On this – and other – more comprehensive challenges, our study may provide limited insight. Very likely, future research will have to acknowledge and elaborate deeper on further strands of the literature, beyond the scope of this paper, before robust conclusions can be drawn.

A first example of those are environmentally oriented debates in (economic) geography, which focus on important human-environment interactions without an explicit focus on innovation. A second example are studies on processes of social adaptation and the social and organisational innovations developing in their course. Given the complexity of systemic change, research is also needed on how the multi-scalarity of transitions goes hand in hand with political realities, according to which regional decision-making processes are, if at all, confined to one’s own territory. Moreover, insights on the practicability and suitability of policies aiming at environmentally friendly products and practices at the regional level are still limited. Therefore, it might also help contextualise the spatial implications of various increasingly transformative (innovation) policies that seek – in a pragmatic, sometimes a-theoretical manner – to accelerate change in a variety of ways.