Innovation systems take a holistic approach to understanding innovation dynamics, emphasizing the role of actors, institutions, and networks as key structural components. These interact to create feedback loops that can either accelerate or hinder innovation. Initially, innovation systems focused on national competitiveness and remained technology-neutral. The introduction of technological innovation systems (TIS), the focus of this chapter, shifted attention to the emergence of specific technologies, particularly sustainable ones that face market barriers. This made TIS a foundational framework in sustainability transitions research. A major milestone in its development was the introduction of TIS ‘functions’, which capture key system dynamics. Over time, TIS has evolved, incorporating factors like geography, policy, and system interactions. Scholars continue to expand the framework, exploring missions, life cycles, and destabilisation. These advancements increasingly integrate technological and social innovation, offering insights into the transition towards more sustainable futures.

The discourse and trials revolving around Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) stem from substantial shifts and advancements within the financial landscape of the past decade. Emerging within the broader sphere of Fintech, these technological strides, often linked to disruptive innovations, have been championed by entrepreneurs aiming to drive essential progress towards universal financial inclusion. Notably, initiatives like Libra Coin, once spearheaded by the now-defunct Libra Consortium, were specifically geared towards fostering financial inclusion globally, especially within economies grappling with inefficient payment infrastructures. Amid the surge of CBDC projects in response to private global stablecoins, a critical query arises: do they genuinely enhance financial inclusion compared to traditional fiat currencies reliant on established public-private payment frameworks? This chapter navigates this dilemma by scrutinizing pivotal attributes of CBDCs and the spectrum of design choices accessible to central bankers and governments. It addresses key challenges confronting CBDCs in advancing financial inclusion, analyzes potential alternatives to CBDCs — specifically, instant payment systems — and contextualizes CBDCs within the broader challenge of preserving the centrality of central banks and fostering financial inclusion. This assessment also considers the issues associated with upholding democratic values.

This chapter focuses on issues of justice in sustainability transitions. Although there is an increasing focus in academia, policymaking and practice on the importance making sustainability transitions not only environmentally and economically sustainable, but also just and fair so that costs and benefits are shared equally, this chapter illustrates that social inequities can often be exacerbated rather than alleviated in the context of sustainability transitions. Indeed, people who are vulnerable and marginalised do not often benefit from sustainability transitions: they may have limited opportunities to actively participate as citizens and suffer from negative consequences of climate and energy policies and projects. Such injustices are often the reason for contestations of developments, projects, policies and initiatives that are part of sustainability transitions. This underlines the importance of considering questions of distributional, recognition, procedural, restorative, cosmopolitan, spatial, postcolonial, intergenerational and multispecies justice when designing, developing, and implementing sustainability transition policies and projects across all socio-technical systems.

Although it is well-known that major technological change can impact multiple socio-technical systems and their patterns of interaction, the issue of multi system dynamics in transitions has until recently not attracted much attention. For new sustainability transition phenomena such as decarbonisation efforts across various systems or circular economy initiatives that involve entire value chains, it is vital to better understand the ways, in which multiple systems interact and shape each other’s transitions. The goal of this chapter is to provide overview and orientation for a rapidly emerging topic by taking stock of the current state of knowledge. We review contributions from three main conceptual frameworks in transition studies: the technological innovation systems approach, the multi-level perspective, and deep transitions. On that basis, we discuss similarities, differences, and open issues to identify a future research agenda for the emerging area of multi-system dynamics in transitions.

In today’s world of increasing spatial inequalities, geopolitical tensions and global shifts in value chains, having a solid grasp of the spatial and multi-scalar dynamics that condition transition dynamics is of ever more importance. Initial theories of sustainability transitions have been criticised for being insufficiently equipped to assess the benefits, conflicts and unevenness that are constituted by the territorial contexts in which transitions dynamics and pathways unfold. Questions how sustainability transitions emerge across places and scales were largely off the radar. Interest and engagement with geographical dimensions of sustainability transitions grew however quickly into a prominent sub-field, characterised by a fruitful trading zone populated by geographers, transition scholars and other social scientists seeking to better account for place specificity, multi-scalarity, and spatial unevenness. This chapter outlines the contours of the Geography of Sustainability Transitions (GeoST) wider theoretical research agenda and ongoing debates, framing these specifically around conceptualisations of place and scale.

This chapter examines the critical role of individual behaviour in sustainability transitions, a field traditionally focused on macro- and meso-level processes. While systemic changes in technology and policy are essential, individual actions and small-group dynamics significantly shape sustainable practices and social norms. The chapter explores the interplay between macro-level structural shifts and micro-level behaviour, moving beyond the structure-agency and macro-micro debates in social and behavioural sciences. Drawing on psychology and social practice theory, it highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches to link individual actions with systemic transitions. Through an analysis of evolving individual roles in sustainability initiatives, particularly energy transitions, the chapter argues for a nuanced understanding of behaviour that includes both habitual actions and deliberate choices. Key research gaps include the need for multi-actor studies, the interrelationship between individual and collective behaviour, and the impact of sustainability transitions on social cohesion.

This chapter argues that reflexivity - an introspective process in which researchers turn their engagement into an object of research - is essential to sustainability transitions research (STR). Reflexivity in STR encompasses not only the non-neutrality of its normative categories, such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘radical’, but also its descriptive categories, including ‘regime’ and ‘system’. This inherent social embeddedness, or ‘engagedness’, positions transition researchers with both an inescapable responsibility and a unique opportunity to shape their engagement reflexively. Reflexivity, which is relevant at every stage of STR, is illustrated in terms of research orientation, role and positionality. It highlights that much of reflexivity lies in the question of how - and with what kind of awareness - you are personally doing what you are doing. As a transition researcher, you are in a comparatively powerful societal position. Your choices matter and make a difference in the world.

Innovation systems take a holistic view of the dynamics shaping innovation, emphasizing actors, institutions, and networks as key structural elements. These interact to create positive or negative feedback loops. Initially, innovation systems focused on national competitiveness and were technology-neutral. The introduction of technological innovation systems (TIS), the focus of this chapter, shifted attention to the emergence of specific technologies, particularly sustainable ones that face market barriers. This made TIS a foundational framework in sustainability transitions research. The introduction of TIS ‘functions’ marked a key milestone in the field. Over time, TIS has evolved, addressing context, geography, and system interactions. Scholars continue to expand innovation system frameworks, exploring missions, life cycles, and destabilisation. This work increasingly integrates both technological and social innovation, supporting pathways towards sustainability.

The Prologue establishes the author’s personal journey of discovering Nordic capitalism as a transformative lens for understanding market economies. Through firsthand experiences living and working in Nordic countries, it reveals how encountering their universal social services, tax systems, and union participation challenged fundamental assumptions about capitalism formed as an American MBA student and corporate employee. The chapter positions Nordic capitalism as a practical alternative to American neoliberalism when mounting sustainability challenges demand new paradigms, likening the present moment to a potential Kuhnian “scientific revolution“ and paradigm shift away from neoliberal ideology. It introduces key features distinguishing Nordic capitalism, including democratic accountability, stakeholder cooperation, and market alignment with sustainability goals. The Prologue frames the book’s investigation of Nordic capitalism not as a pursuit of utopian ideals, but as a pragmatic exploration of proven approaches for evolving capitalism toward sustainability, an approach that provides hope in a challenging world.

Accelerating sustainability transitions is crucial for addressing complex challenges and meeting the 2015 Paris Agreement’s climate targets. This chapter examines the role of time in sociotechnical change, emphasizing the urgency of action across energy, agriculture, and manufacturing to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. While acceleration drives innovation, social equity, and economic resilience, it also risks unequal resource distribution and marginalising vulnerable populations. The chapter explores how stakeholders advocate for different timescales and technologies, highlighting the political nature of transitions. It introduces timescapes to capture the dynamic interplay of temporal dimensions shaping transition processes. Historical energy transitions illustrate the complexities of speed, duration, and acceleration, underscoring the need for interdisciplinary approaches. By addressing political and social dynamics, the chapter promotes transparency, equity, and justice in climate action. Future research should integrate diverse methodologies and critically examine temporal frameworks to support more effective and inclusive sustainability policies

The chapter discusses the key elements of the Bank of England’s legal mandate and whether these can serve as a legal basis for supporting environmental sustainability policies as part of its monetary and financial stability objectives. Section 2.1 discusses central bank mandates and objectives generally by exploring the regime or legal formulation that authorises central banks to provide for policy decision-making and its implementation regarding managing climate risks. Section 2.2 considers the Bank’s mandate and environmental sustainability by examining the arrangements provided by the Bank of England Act 1998 for the Bank to take the government’s economic policy into account when pursuing its secondary objectives. Section 2.3 analyzes the meaning of ‘secondary objectives’ for the Bank and how these are set either via legislation or via remit letters. Section 2.4 discusses how central banks in practice can support secondary objectives whilst pursuing their primary objectives. Section 2.5 analyzes the problem of legal uncertainty regarding the Bank’s ability to support an environmental sustainability policy, given that this is only specified in remit letters, and argues that there would be greater legal certainty if there were an explicit reference to sustainable environmental policy as a secondary objective in its statutory objectives. Section 2.6 considers the general question of whether central banks should discriminate in favour of green assets. Section 2.7 concludes that the Bank has a duty to ensure that material physical and transition risks are incorporated into monetary and financial stability policy and that this should be clearly stated in its governing law.

This chapter, the first to our knowledge, examines whether central banks in Caribbean small island states have the necessary legal and institutional frameworks to achieve the global central banking community’s pledge to contribute to net-zero and safeguard financial stability from climate change. We find that the legal mandates of the central banks studied do not extend to climate change or sustainability. However, climate-related risks, if qualified as financial risks, fall within their financial stability mandate. Further, the path to net-zero is limited by the existing internal capacity of central banks, which is not geared towards climate science. This is not surprising since climate change has fairly recently moved beyond the acceptable risk tolerance of central banks, and only now is a response being fashioned. We argue that the region faces a high boundary risk with respect to net-zero. We note that even if Caribbean central banks are equipped with a mandate and policy tools to address climate change, net-zero may still not be achievable where climate change public policies are absent or not fully articulated. Further, Caribbean economies carry a heavy weighting to climate-sensitive or carbon-relevant sectors. Hence, net-zero may only be achieved with the involvement of committed governments.

Pressing environmental and societal challenges, such as the climate crisis and social inequality, demand policy interventions to steer and accelerate sustainability transitions. This chapter highlights four key intervention areas: providing direction to transitions (directionality), fostering innovation (niche support), phasing out unsustainable practices (regime destabilisation), and coordinating transition processes (coordination). We outline their theoretical rationale in transition studies and offer interdisciplinary insights from policy research. Based on a comprehensive literature review, we present 15 concrete policy interventions to transform production and consumption systems. Evaluating these interventions with empirical findings from leading transition journals, we highlight research opportunities at the intersection of public policy and sustainability transitions. Given the resistance and contestation around transformational policies, we aim to foster interdisciplinary exchange on how to accelerate sustainability transitions.