SYSTEM INNOVATION FOR SUSTAINABLE BUILT ENVIRONMENTS: THE CASE OF LIGHT EMITTING DIODES

misbe2011 Tracking Number 6

The United Kingdom (UK) government policy is increasingly directed at transforming the built environment to an environmentally sustainable one. The government, for example, has set a target for a reduction in carbon emissions by 80% by 2050 compared to 1990 levels. A large number of new policies and regulations are being introduced to minimise the impact of the built environment and the construction industry on the environment. These pressures are inducing a large amount of product and process innovation across distributed networks: manufacturers, suppliers, installers, clients, users, and so on. To address this challenge, this research suggests that the explicit adoption of a multi-level perspective of sustainable transition management as a way forward. The key point of the multi-level perspective is that transitions or long-term changes come about through interplay between processes at different levels in different phases. This model consists of three levels: socio-technical landscape, regime, and technical niches. This paper reports on an ongoing research project which is tracking, real time, the start-up and growth of a company which is developing and introducing a range of leading edge light emitting diode (LED) technologies. Interim results will be presented with the focus being on the distributed interaction between the principal actors: a LED module manufacture, a luminaire (light fitting) manufacture and a range of end users.