Narratives of grassroots innovations: a comparison of voluntary simplicity and the transition movement in Italy

Giuseppe Feola

International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development, 2014, vol. 8, issue 3, 250-269

Abstract: Grassroots innovations (GI) are promising examples of deliberate transformation of socio-technical systems towards resilience and sustainability. However, evidence is needed on the factors that limit or enable their success. This paper set out to study how GI use narratives to empower innovation in the face of incumbent socio-technical regimes. Institutional documents were comparatively analysed to assess how the narratives influence the structure, form of action and external interactions of two Italian grassroots networks, Bilanci di Giustizia and Transition Network Italy. The paper finds an internal consistency between narratives and strategies for each of the two networks. The paper also highlights core similarities, but also significant differences in the ethical basis of the two narratives, and in the organisations and strategies. Such differences determine different forms of innovation empowerment and expose the niche to different potentials to transform incumbent regimes, or to the risk of being co-opted by them.

Keywords: grassroots innovation; transition movement; voluntary simplicity; narratives; Italy; socio-technical systems; STS; resilience; sustainability; sustainable development; grassroots networks; ethics; innovation empowerment. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=66612 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijisde:v:8:y:2014:i:3:p:250-269

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Innovation and Sustainable Development from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().