Innovation for sustainability: how actors are myopically caught in processes of co-evolution

In this paper, we argue that the development, uptake and adoption of innovations resembles an evolutionary process of variation, selection and retention (within broader processes of co-evolution) in which actors are myopically caught. We do so in four steps. First, we review in what ways socio-technical evolution resembles biological evolution. Second, we argue that in socio-technical evolution so-called ‘configurations that work’ can be viewed as evolutionary units, which are subject to selection pressures, variation and human-made couplings between variation and selection. This explains why innovation is often cumulative, based on variation and recombination. Third, we discuss how producers, consumers, governments and scientists are myopically caught in processes of co-evolution. While humans are capable of imagining the need for system change and details of desired systems, they are less capable of accepting the concomitant higher costs and inconveniences and adopt new interpretive schemes. Fourth, in a pluralist world, steering is done by all kind of actors, including those who actively resist transformative change. Because of this, steering by government and coalitions of change can achieve little more than a modulation of ongoing dynamics, despite disturbing evidence of a run-away climate, mass extinction, pervasive ecological degradation and steady depletion of resources. A new consciousness of the Anthropocene can evoke fundamental changes in science and the economy if—and only if—they are sufficiently carried by institutional changes and new practices. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Evolution and sustainability: gathering the strands for an Anthropocene synthesis’.