Design for system innovations and transitions: a conceptual framework integrating insights from sustainablity science and theories of system innovations and transitions A.Idil Gaziulusoy a, * , Han Brezet b a Victorian Eco-innovation Lab, Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning, Melbourne, Australia b Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Technical University of Delft, Delft, The Netherlands article info Article history: Received 21 August 2014 Received in revised form 12 June 2015 Accepted 14 June 2015 Available online xxx Keywords: Design for sustainability Product development Service development Design methodology Transitions System innovation Sustainability science abstract It is increasingly acknowledged that, in order to achieve sustainability, there is an urgent need for radical and transformative restructuring of socio-technical systems that meet our needs. These transformations are referred to as system innovations for sustainability or transitions. Transitions and system innovations cover not only product and process innovations but also changes in user practices, markets, policy, regulations, culture, infrastructure, lifestyle and management of firms and have significant implications for design and innovation activity aiming to contribute to the societal endeavour of achieving sustain- ability. Even though theory on system innovations and transitions is now extensive, it provided expla- nations regarding how companies and design and innovation activities fit into the big and long-term picture of system innovations and transitions only to a certain extent. In addition, there have not been many efforts in the design for sustainability field to learn from the theories of transitions and system innovations. In this paper, we make an initial theoretical contribution into the design and innovation for sustainability field by integrating relevant insights from sustainability science and system innovations and transitions theories. The result of this integration is a proposal for a prescriptive conceptual framework which explains how wider-scale systemic changes can be addressed at smaller elements of socio-technical systems specifically focussing on the design and innovation level within companies. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction As the discourse of sustainability has matured over the past twenty years, our understanding of the concept has evolved from being an idealized, generalized and static property of individual (system) elements to contextual and dynamic properties of systems themselves (Clayton and Radcliffe, 1996; Faber et al., 2005). This dynamic conceptualization of sustainability assumes that changes will occur over time and space both internally in systems them- selves and externally beyond the boundaries of the systems, thus, posits sustainability as a ‘moving target’ (Hjorth and Bagheri, 2006, p. 76). Internal and external forces influencing change over the environment and all associated sub-systems including society and the economy continuously alter the conditions of sustainability. Since sustainability is a moving target, it needs to be planned through process-based, multi-scale and systemic approaches, which are guided by targets/visions, instead of traditional goal- based optimization approaches (Bagheri and Hjorth, 2007). Since sustainability is a dynamic system property, it cannot be estab- lished at the level of individual elements but at the level of systems they are part of. It is increasingly acknowledged that, in order to achieve sus- tainability, there is an urgent need for radical and transformative restructuring of socio-technical systems that meet our needs (Ryan, 2013). These transformations cover institutional, social/cultural, organizational as well as technological change (Loorbach, 2010); that is, they need to take place at societal level. The process of so- cietal transformation which needs to take place to achieve sus- tainability is defined as transitions to sustainable socio-technical systems or system innovations for sustainability. Transitions and system innovations are conceptualised as multi-phase, multi-level dynamic processes which take place over long periods of time and result in mainstream practices becoming outdated and being replaced by a set of new practices (e.g., Berkhout, 2002; Geels, * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ61 3 903 55379. E-mail address: idil.gaziulusoy@unimelb.edu.au (A.Idil Gaziulusoy). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.06.066 0959-6526/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2015) 1e11 Please cite this article in press as: Gaziulusoy, A.I., Brezet, H., Design for system innovations and transitions: a conceptual framework integrating insights from sustainablity science and theories of system innovations and transitions, Journal of Cleaner Production (2015), http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.06.066