Illuhmannating Technological Innovation Systems: Towards a Systems Perspective

ABSTRACT The Technological Innovation Systems framework operates from an economic perspective, investigating the generation, diffusion and utilization of a specific technology within a particular institutional infrastructure. Emerging from innovation sciences, the TIS framework inherited methodological individualism as the micro‐level approach to explaining change. However, with the recent introduction of motors of innovation, methodological individualism has become incapable of explaining systemic change within a TIS. To take the next step in the TISs evolutionary process, we survey the theory of complex systems proposed by German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. We demonstrate how Luhmann's systems theory can account for systemic change within TISs by focusing on the communication frame of reference. We further integrate Luhmann's theory into the TIS framework, illustrating how adopting his perspective affects the methods employed by TIS researchers, provides suggestions for system steering techniques of TIS policy makers and informs strategic positioning of TIS advocates. We understand a TIS to take the form of a communication system that operates by the code innovate/legitimate, allowing structurally coupled systems to formulate programmes that focus on the development and market diffusion of a specific technology. In this way, Luhmann's work is shown to causally connect a TIS to its wider environment, thereby responding to recent criticism of both the TIS framework and innovation systems research in general.