Tremendous research, policy, and investment is directed towards a new wave of automation in modern societies. Most notable within discourse for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but also in radical ideas […]
The book, Grassroots Innovation Movements, is now available open access. The book examines six diverse grassroots movements in India, South America & Europe, and explores for each the spaces where […]
A new open access article in the journal Futures by Adrian Smith and Mariano Fressoli contrasts grassroots subversion of some of the technologies of automation with the way automation is […]
This post reports research into the situated development over time of two digital platforms for democratic deliberation and decision. There has been renewed interest recently in techniques for facilitated citizen […]
The relationship between technology and human capabilities is ambivalent and complex. A new article by Cian O’Donovan and Adrian Smith reports analysis of how users experience enhanced (or diminished) capabilities […]
En los ultimos años Adrian Smith ha tenido la privilegia de colaboración con colegas y comunidades en America Latina e España en el desarrollo de innovación de base y sostentabilidad. […]
Drawing upon Adrian Smith’s fieldwork in Barcelona under the Knowledge Politics of Smart Urbanism project, a team of researchers from the project have co-authored a chapter about shifts in digital […]
Developing out of research into grassroots appropriations of digital farbictation, Kat Braybrooke and Adrian Smith recently guest edited the publication of the Journal of Peer Production dedicated to research articles […]
Mari Martiskainen has published a new article (open access) with colleagues that builds on her work with the CISE project, and now looks at Energy Cafés. Community action has an […]
Experimentation with radically open and collaborative ways of producing knowledge and material artefacts can be found everywhere, from the free/libre and open-source software movement to citizen science initiatives, and from […]
Last summer, Andy Stirling and Adrian Smith were invited to contribute a ‘thinkpiece’ about grassroots innovation to Friends of the Earth’s Big Ideas series. We explored how grassroots innovation initiatives, […]
Adrian Smith from SPRU recently published a new working paper that draws upon research in makerspaces in order to explore and illustrate some of the politics of social innovation, and […]
This article focuses on the role of community leadership in the development of grass- roots innovations. It asks: When community leaders initiate energy projects, what types of skills and knowledge […]
In the summer of 2016 Andy Stirling and Adrian Smith were asked by Friends of the Earth to write a ‘thinkpiece’ on the topic grassroots innovation and democracy as part […]
Twelve years ago I wrote an article that set my first, tentative bearings for embarking upon research into the actual and potential roles innovative grassroots activity might play in sustainable developments. The article has […]
Our new book, Grassroots Innovation Movements, will be published in August 2016. You can download the Open Access Introductory chapter here. Innovation is increasingly invoked by policy elites and business […]
This book chapter looks at the history of eco-housing in the UK and contrasts it with building processes in the volume housebuilding sector. Over decades, eco-housing activists have cultivated a wide […]
Community action for sustainability is a promising site of socio- technical innovation. Here we test the applicability of co- evolutionary niche theories of innovation diffusion (strategic niche management, SNM) to […]
The final, synthesis article from the CISE research project is published in the journal Environment & Planning A. The Open Access article (pdf) argues for a refocusing around the critical edges that […]
“Throughout the history of both modern environmentalism and development there has existed an insistent undercurrent of practical, grassroots initiatives seeking socially just and environmentally sustainable forms of production and consumption”. […]
Grassroots Innovations 