Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
broadening markets and providing new functionality'. The problem with restricting one's
analysis to the market determinants of technological change is that it neglects the fact that
markets may not respond adequately to sustainability concerns. For example, consumers
may well be concerned with product safety but are likely to be unconcerned by the safety
of the manufacturing process a
ecting those who made the product. More is needed than
matching the technological capacities of
ff
rms with current societal demands. Our inquiry
will distinguish between sustaining innovation and disrupting innovation in a broader
technological and societal context.
Product lines/sectors that are well developed, and that have become standardized, expe-
rience incremental innovation for the most part. Changes are focused on cost-reducing
production methods - including increasing the scale of production, displacing labor with
technology, and exercising more control over workers - rather than on signi
fi
cant changes
in products. Gradually, process innovation also declines as manufacturing or production
processes are standardized. A useful concept related to individual product lines is that of
'technological regimes', which are de
fi
ned by certain boundaries for technological
progress and by directions or trajectories in which progress is possible and worth doing
(Nelson and Winter, 1977).
Sometimes, however, the dominant technologies (such as the vacuum tube and mechan-
ical calculator) are challenged and rather abruptly displaced by signi
fi
cant disrupting
innovations (such as the transistor and electronic calculator), but this is relatively rare,
although very important (Kemp, 1994; Christensen, 1997). We shall argue that disrupt-
ing innovations may be what is needed to achieve sustainability. As industrial economies
mature, innovation in many sectors may become more and more di
fi
cult and incremen-
tal, regulatory and governmental policies are increasingly in
uenced, if not captured, by
the purveyors of the dominant technology (regime) which becomes more resistant to
change. However, occasionally, traditional sectors can revitalize themselves, such as in the
case of cotton textiles.
5
Other sectors, notably those based on emerging technologies, may experience increased
innovation. The overall economic health and employment potential of a nation as a whole
is the sum of these diverging trends, and is increasingly dependent on international trade.
Whether nations seek to increase revenues based on competition in technological perfor-
mance or alternatively rely on cost-cutting strategies can have an enormous impact on
both employment and the environment. As will be discussed below, health, safety and
environmental regulation, structured appropriately, as well as new societal demands, can
also stimulate signi
fl
cant technological changes that might not otherwise have occurred
at the time (Ashford et al., 1985).
A technological innovation can be characterized by its motivating force, by its type, and
by its nature. The motivating force behind technological change can be the result of an
industry's main business activities or it can evolve from the industry's e
fi
orts to comply
with or respond to health, safety, or environmental regulations and pressures (Ashford
et al., 1979). Regulation, market signals and anticipated worker or consumer demand can
a
ff
ect any of the characteristics of innovation. There is ample evidence that the most
signi
ff
ed by business managers is envi-
ronmental legislation and enforcement (Ashford and Hall, 2009).
Concerning the type of innovation, four di
fi
cant driving force for technological change identi
fi
erent levels of technological change need
to be considered: (1) product changes, (2) process changes, (3) shifts from products to
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