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 […]
We are seeking abstracts for high-quality research papers on the topic of innovation for social inclusive and development. The call arises from a session Adrian Smith and colleagues are organising […]
Constructing grassroots innovations for sustainability: New research in the field Adrian Smith and Gill Seyfang introduce a new collection of academic papers on grassroots innovations, and discuss the origins and […]
A new working paper presents new evidence from our 12 in-depth case studies of community energy projects in the UK and explores how useful ‘niche management’ theory is in helping […]
Parallel sustainable monetary systems are being developed by civil society groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), informed by ecological economics perspectives on development, value, economic scale and growth, and responding to […]
A Global Community Currency Movement? Unity and Diversity in Practice We present key findings of the GICC (Grassroots Innovations: Community Currencies) project’s analysis of the activities and characteristics of the […]
Community Currencies and Sustainability: New economics objectives and orientations Community currencies have long been associated with the environmental movement, and in this briefing we identify various sustainability rationales for developing […]
A new working paper presents results of our survey of community energy projects in the UK. Our survey investigates the objectives, origins and development of these groups across the UK, their activities and their networking activities as a sector. We also examine the strengths and weaknesses of these groups, along with the opportunities and threats presented by wider socioeconomic and political contexts, in order to improve understanding of the sector’s potential and the challenges it faces.
A new working paper presents a niche analysis of community currencies for sustainability. Over the last decade, the nascent field of Sustainability Transitions has sought to explain the conditions […]
Adrian Smith and Adrian Ely blogged for the Guardian today from the Rio+20 Summit, arguing that sustainable development has to address inclusive innovation. You can read the blog here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/jun/18/rio20-inclusive-innovation-sustainable-future […]
The challenges of sustainable development (and climate change and peak oil, in particular) demand system-wide transformations in sociotechnical systems of provision. An academic literature around coevolutionary innovation for sustainability has […]
How does civil society feature in wide-scale transformation processes to socio-technical systems like energy? In this book chapter, Adrian Smith explors ways of addressing this question by drawing upon concepts […]
A new working paper presents results of the first global scoping study of community currencies for sustainability. As a response to the unsustainability of current global financial systems, parallel sustainable […]
Grassroots Innovations for Sustainability: A Research Workshop Aim: critical reflection, analytical consolidation and developing research agendas 16-18th May 2012 at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK. News story Organised by Adrian […]
Abstract. The author critically evaluates the impact and potential of a community currencyöor local money systemöknown as the `local exchange trading scheme’ (LETS), to contribute to sustainable local development (SLD). […]
Grassroots Innovations for Sustainable Development Conference, UCL London, 10th June, 2005 The UK government’s new Sustainable Development Strategy, Securing the Future, places greener innovation and local action at its foundation. Yet these […]
On March 8th 2011, a group of researchers met at UEA London to spend the day together, exchanging ideas and experience around our common interests in grassroots innovations research. The aim […]
Grassroots Innovations 