Disruptive Social Innovation for a Low Carbon World
I’ve recently published a new paper called “Disruptive Social Innovation for a Low Carbon World’, which was published as part of the Visions and Pathways Project. This paper critically reviews the social movements or social innovations that have the most potential to change the world’s current trajectory acutely in the direction of a low carbon world. I’ve posted the introduction below and the full paper is available here.
Disruptive Social Innovation for a Low Carbon World
Samuel Alexander
It is becoming increasingly clear that small, incremental changes to the way humans use and produce energy are unlikely to catalyse a transformation to a low-carbon civilisation, at least, not within the ever-tightening time frame urged by the world’s climate scientists. In September 2013, the IPCC published its fifth report, in which it was estimated that the world’s ‘carbon budget’ – that is, the maximum carbon emissions available if the world is to have a good chance of keeping global warming below 2 degrees – is likely to be entirely used up in around 15-25 years, based on current trends (IPCC, 2013). If ‘business as usual’ continues, the trends indicate that we may be facing a future that is 4 degrees hotter, or more (see World Bank, 2012; Christoff, 2013). It is not clear to what extent civilisation is compatible with such a climate.
This calls for an urgent and committed re-evaluation of dominant strategies for transitioning beyond fossil fuels. If there is any hope for rapid decarbonisation today, it surely lies, at this late stage, in movements, innovations, or technologies that do not seek to produce change through a smooth series of increments, but through an ability to somehow ‘disrupt’ the status quo and fundamentally redirect the world’s trajectory toward a low-carbon future.
The phrase ‘disruptive innovation’ will be used in this paper to refer to rapid and far-reaching societal change that is provoked by the abrupt emergence of a social movement, technology, business model, or confluence of such phenomena. This usage draws loosely on the work of Clayton Christensen (1995), who coined the term ‘disruptive innovation’ to describe times when commercial enterprises develop new business models or technologies that rapidly change the market in ways that are both unexpected and game-changing. In Christensen’s work, a disruptive innovation is contrasted with a ‘sustaining innovation’, which is less about changing the game and more about competing more effectively in the same game.
While there may be a certain irony to using terminology from commercial discourse to refer to socio-technical innovations that could potentially shake the very energy basis of the global economy, the language of ‘disruptive innovation’ aptly describes the extent and speed at which any transition to low-carbon world must proceed. With the carbon budget shrinking as business as usual persists – to say nothing of the myriad other ecological crises worsening by the day – a progression of ‘sustaining innovations’ seems unlikely to affect the changes necessary. The task is too urgent; the extent of change needed, too great.
As implied above, disruptive innovations can take place within various spheres of life: social, economic, technological, institutional, and political. In order to transition to a low-carbon world, it is likely that a co-ordinated confluence of innovations from all such spheres will be required to produce deep behavioural, systemic, and structural change (see generally, SPREAD, 2011). This paper focuses on the socio-cultural sphere. Without denying the importance of other spheres of transformative change, there are reasons to think the socio-cultural sphere may be of particular importance in driving the transition to a low-carbon world.
The socio-cultural domain may have special disruptive potential due to the fact that other spheres of innovation can be understood as tools or means, whereas the socio-cultural sphere can be understood to be the source of goals or ends. This difference is important because until there is a culture shaped by the values and vision of a low-carbon world, available tools or means for societal change (e.g. legislation, technology, capital, etc.) are likely to be misdirected, and perhaps even be employed in counter-productive ways. In much the same way as the tool of ‘fire’ can have a positive or negative impact on our lives, depending on how it used and how much of it there is, the tools of technology, business, and politics can advance or inhibit the transition to a low-carbon society, depending on the social values and desires that shape their implementation and development. For these reasons, the socio-cultural sphere can be considered fundamental, in the sense that it provides the ends towards which available means are directed.
This point deserves some elaboration. The nature and development of technology in a society, for example, will take different forms depending on the social context and the dominant social values which drive innovation. If the primary end of ‘research and development’ is profit-maximisation, not necessarily the desire for a low-carbon world, it follows that technological innovations are just as likely to inhibit, rather than facilitate, a low-carbon transition (e.g. fracking technologies). A similar dynamic exists with respect to business and politics. Until there is a socio-cultural context that incentivises or demands economic or political change in the direction of a low-carbon world, the tools of business and public policy are unlikely to be sources of ‘disruptive innovation’, but at most sources of ‘sustaining innovation’. More likely still, they will merely serve to reify and entrench the status quo.
Another way to think about the importance of the socio-cultural sphere is in terms of sequencing; that is, in terms of what order various innovations may need to take place on the path to a low-carbon world. By the time business, politics, and technology are capable of ‘disrupting’ the status quo, it may be that a revolution in social values would need to have already taken place, in order to have driven such innovation in the first place and been receptive to it. After all, it is no good establishing an innovative bike-sharing business if few people are interested in cycling; just as an effective carbon policy will not be the foundation of a successful political campaign until the social conditions are ripe for its acceptance. Again, this is not meant to downplay the undeniable importance of technological, economic, and political innovations on the path to a low-carbon society. A coordinated, multi-faceted approach is both necessary and desirable. But insofar as technology, business, and politics are a reflection of the culture in which they are situated, it would seem that disruptive innovation in the socio-cultural sphere may need to be the prime mover, so to speak, which would then enable or ignite further disruptive innovations in other spheres of life.
Significantly, the socio-cultural sphere is also the domain where individuals have most agency. We may not feel like we have much influence over the decisions of our members of parliament, or the decisions of big business or other global institutions, but within the structural constraints of any society there nevertheless resides a realm of freedom through which individuals and communities can resist and oppose the existing order and make their influence felt (Gibson-Graham, 2006; Holloway, 2010). However small those acts of opposition (or renewal) might seem in isolation, when they form part of a large social movement, their cumulative impact can reshape society ‘from below’ and ultimately form a tidal wave of revolutionary significance, washing away the old world, or aspects of it, and clearing space for the new. A brief glance at the history of social movements shows this to be true.
Of course, to suggest that technology, business, and politics are a merely reflection of culture is a contestable and, in many ways, an overly simplistic proposition. Public policy, for example, rather than always being shaped by culture in a uni-directional way, sometimes takes the lead in societal development and is influenced by forces other than culture. The same can be said of the spheres of business and technology, both of which shape culture as they are shaped by culture, in a dialectical fashion. Nevertheless, it would be fair to state that any transformative politics, technology, or business model needs to be complemented, and probably preceded by, a co-relative transformation in the socio-cultural sphere. This suggests that we must carefully consider not only what cultural or social conditions would best facilitate the realisation of a low-carbon world, but also what role social or cultural movements might have to play in producing those conditions.
The purpose of this paper, then, is to review contenders, so to speak, for the category of most innovative social movements working toward a low-carbon world, movements which are potentially ‘disruptive’ in the sense outlined above. Admittedly, it is a difficult challenge indeed attempting to choose movements or innovations with genuinely disruptive potential. An element of arbitrariness is inevitable, especially since there is no ‘criteria’ as such by which they can be objectively ranked (see Science Communication Unit, 2014). Furthermore, the ‘tipping points’ of influential social movements in history have generally come as a surprise to the societies that they came to influence, due to the impossibility of anticipating the confluence of events and social conditions which were needed for them to flourish. Who anticipated the civil rights activist, Rosa Parks? Who could have foreseen that a simple act, such as not giving up one’s seat on the bus, would give such momentum to the Civil Rights Movement? This calls for a healthy dose of humility in undertaking the current task.
It follows that different people would surely make different choices and see different degrees of potential in today’s various social movements for a low-carbon world. Be that as it may, the movements reviewed below did seem to jump out somewhat as obvious contenders, not only for what they already are, but more importantly, what they are promising, or even threatening, to become (see also, Seyfang and Haxeltine, 2012; SPREAD, 2011; Seyfang et al, 2010). It is an impossible calculation to know which of these are most likely to explode into the mainstream and ‘change the world’. Perhaps none of them will; perhaps they may all play a part; or perhaps the change will be ignited by something else entirely. Fortunately, this very uncertainty comes with a silver lining – namely, that hope for a low-carbon world partly resides in the fact that the movement or movements that could spark the Great Transition beyond fossil fuels may, as yet, lie unimagined, or simply be dormant, awaiting ignition. For better or worse, a ‘black swan’ may lie around every bend in the river (Taleb, 2007).
As the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein, once remarked about attempts to foresee the future (see Rorty, 1979, xii):
When we think about the future of the world, we always have in mind its being at the place where it would be if it continued to move as we see it moving now. We do not realize that it moves not in a straight line, but in a curve, and that its direction constantly changes.
Bearing this message of caution and hope in mind, the following review will consider those social movements or social innovations that at least have the potential to change the current trajectory of history acutely in the direction of a low-carbon world.
The full paper is available here.
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