The transdisciplinary research partnerships promoted by LPTranstion are motivated by the need to mobilize and produce knowledge about transition processes and pathways in close relationship with ongoing social innovations. Indeed, transition studies show that technological innovations alone will not be sufficient to move towards more sustainable societies, but that organizational and institutional innovations that build new social relationship around technological innovations and/or societal transformations are essential. Such social innovations are any new approaches, practices or interventions, that leads to change in organizational structures, governance mechanisms or institutional arrangements and whose implementations solves a problem of the community, answers a need or a fundamental aspiration (following C. Bouchard).
Therefore, social innovations by private sector, social profit and non-profit actors are at the heart of social and ecological transition dynamics. LPTransition will build upon these social innovations to promote transdisciplinary partnership research at various levels and through various means such as:
- Research on individual innovation pathways and initiatives
- Research on innovation systems and processes
- Support to the dissemination and transfer of social innovations
- Production of « actionable » knowledge that can be used by the actors in problem solving contexts
