On other occasions, grassroots organizations pioneer, adapt and develop novel
uses of new (high) technologies emerging out of more conventional innovation
systems. An example here is vibrant explorations into new forms of commonsbased, peer-produced goods and services using versatile digital design and fabrication
technologies in FabLabs and Hackerspaces today.
Policy and business is slowly taking notice of this bottom-up innovative activity.
Agendas for inclusive innovation, open innovation and social innovation (highly
relevant to green transformations) are drawing grassroots innovation to the attention
of elite national and international agencies (OECD, 2012; World Bank, 2012).
Grassroots activity attracts interest as both a source of potentially inclusive or socially
valuable ideas and practices, worthy of scaling up, and as a relevant field of
experience from which programmes for inclusive, social or green innovation
might learn.
Not all business and policy incumbents welcome such developments. Policies
for promoting corporate renewable energy models have been resisted by fossil energy
interests, for instance. Neither does everyone in the grassroots welcome main -
streaming either, where there can be reactions to elite co-option and distortion of
visionary innovations. The resurgence of citizen and community energy initiatives
in recent years is a countervailing example in energy, for instance.
Such political features in grassroots innovation can go much further and much
deeper. Grassroots innovation movements can pursue an active and critical
alternative to elite trajectories of innovation. Innovative initiatives in agroecology,
for example, resist the encroachment of corporate-led agricultural biotechnology.
Movements experimenting with commons-based, peer-production in grassroots
digital design and fabrication, and their vision for open hardware and software within
a knowledge commons, are actively opposing and resisting the institutions of
proprietary intellectual property at the heart of conventional innovation institutions.
In cases such as these, grassroots innovations are not simply contributing novel
ideas and practices for green transformations, but contesting the very principles
and character of these transformations.
So the questions guiding this chapter are, what transformations are envisaged
and contested from ‘below’, and how does the politics of grassroots innovation
manifest itself? In answering these questions, green transformations from below
become infused with a politics that involves issues of autonomy and institutional -
ization, ingenuity and contested knowledges, and objects and mobilization.
This chapter illustrates its argument with examples from grassroots innovation
movements at different times and places. In the following section we introduce
grassroots innovation by exploring three different framings and approaches to the
phenomenon evident in practice and research. We then contrast grassroots
innovation with more conventional innovation approaches, which typically involve
research institutions, firms and investors. The politics of grassroots innovations in
green transformations is understood through relationships with conventional
approaches to innovation. Then follows consideration of the political dynamics
generated by attempts to insert appropriable ideas and practices arising through
Green transformations from below? 103
uses of new (high) technologies emerging out of more conventional innovation
systems. An example here is vibrant explorations into new forms of commonsbased, peer-produced goods and services using versatile digital design and fabrication
technologies in FabLabs and Hackerspaces today.
Policy and business is slowly taking notice of this bottom-up innovative activity.
Agendas for inclusive innovation, open innovation and social innovation (highly
relevant to green transformations) are drawing grassroots innovation to the attention
of elite national and international agencies (OECD, 2012; World Bank, 2012).
Grassroots activity attracts interest as both a source of potentially inclusive or socially
valuable ideas and practices, worthy of scaling up, and as a relevant field of
experience from which programmes for inclusive, social or green innovation
might learn.
Not all business and policy incumbents welcome such developments. Policies
for promoting corporate renewable energy models have been resisted by fossil energy
interests, for instance. Neither does everyone in the grassroots welcome main -
streaming either, where there can be reactions to elite co-option and distortion of
visionary innovations. The resurgence of citizen and community energy initiatives
in recent years is a countervailing example in energy, for instance.
Such political features in grassroots innovation can go much further and much
deeper. Grassroots innovation movements can pursue an active and critical
alternative to elite trajectories of innovation. Innovative initiatives in agroecology,
for example, resist the encroachment of corporate-led agricultural biotechnology.
Movements experimenting with commons-based, peer-production in grassroots
digital design and fabrication, and their vision for open hardware and software within
a knowledge commons, are actively opposing and resisting the institutions of
proprietary intellectual property at the heart of conventional innovation institutions.
In cases such as these, grassroots innovations are not simply contributing novel
ideas and practices for green transformations, but contesting the very principles
and character of these transformations.
So the questions guiding this chapter are, what transformations are envisaged
and contested from ‘below’, and how does the politics of grassroots innovation
manifest itself? In answering these questions, green transformations from below
become infused with a politics that involves issues of autonomy and institutional -
ization, ingenuity and contested knowledges, and objects and mobilization.
This chapter illustrates its argument with examples from grassroots innovation
movements at different times and places. In the following section we introduce
grassroots innovation by exploring three different framings and approaches to the
phenomenon evident in practice and research. We then contrast grassroots
innovation with more conventional innovation approaches, which typically involve
research institutions, firms and investors. The politics of grassroots innovations in
green transformations is understood through relationships with conventional
approaches to innovation. Then follows consideration of the political dynamics
generated by attempts to insert appropriable ideas and practices arising through
Green transformations from below? 103