Research Policy 32 (2003) 49–68 The transformation of technological regimes  Ibo van de Poel * Department of Philosophy, School of Technology, Policy and Management, Delft University of Technology, P.O. Box 5015, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands Received 30 August 2001; received in revised form 10 November 2001; accepted 4 December 2001 Abstract This article explores how the transformation of technological regimes is enabled and constrained by sectoral patterns of innovation. Four innovation patterns are distinguished: the supplier-dependent, the user-driven, the mission-oriented and the R&D-dependent innovation pattern. On the basis of a multiple case, it is shown that there are distinct differences between how these four innovation patterns enable and constrain the transformation of technological regimes and in the degree to which they do so. It is further shown that innovation patterns sometimes enable the development and acceptance of innovations that radically deviate from existing regimes and may help to transform such regimes. The implications for the management of technology are discussed. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Technological regimes; Regime transformations; Patterns of innovation; Radical innovation; Niches 1. Introduction The days that technical innovation and invention were seen as creative acts of some lonesome genius seem long gone. In the literature on innovation and technology dynamics, there is now widespread recog- nition that invention and innovation are conditioned by such factors as earlier innovations, the search heuristics of engineers in an industry, available tech- nical knowledge, market demand and industrial struc- ture. As a result, innovation is often incremental and cumulative. Periods of incremental innovation are sometimes interrupted by so-called radical innovations. While these are perhaps not the products of some lonesome  This article is based on my Ph.D. thesis (van de Poel, 1998a). Limited parts are literally drawn from my thesis. * Tel.: +31-15-278-4716; fax: +31-15-278-4934. E-mail address: i.r.vandepoel@tbm.tudelft.nl (I.v.d. Poel). genius, factors like entrepreunership and serendipity certainly play a role in the occurrence of radical in- novations. However, also more structural conditions are important. Successful radical innovations—and the way they are adopted—can transform existing patterns of tech- nical development or what I will call technological regimes, and thus have lasting effects on technical development. In this article, I investigate how such structural factors as industrial structures and divi- sions of labor among actors enable and constrain the transformation of existing patterns of technical de- velopment. To unravel these relations, I use two con- cepts: technological regime and innovation pattern. The term ‘technological regime’ refers to the rules that guide the design and further development of a particular technology. Such rules result in incremen- tal and cumulative patterns of technical development. The term ‘innovation pattern’ refers to the constella- tion of roles and the division of labor among actors 0048-7333/02/$ – see front matter © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII:S0048-7333(01)00195-0