The Triple Helix concept of innovation systems holds that consensus space among industry, government and university is required to bring together their competences to achieve enhanced economic and social development on a systemic scale. In line with this argument, this article analyses empirically how the concept of circular economy is conceived in the institutional spheres of “industry”, “government” and “university”. Innovation systems are constantly being reconstructed through knowledge production and communication, which is reflected in how concepts develop in the different spheres. By applying natural language processing tools to key contributions from each of the three spheres (the “Triple Helix”), it is shown that, although institutional backgrounds do contribute to differing conceptualizations of circular economy, there is a substantial but limited conceptual consensus space, which, according to the Triple Helix, should open new opportunities for innovations. The consensus space shared across the three spheres focuses on materials and products and sees circular economy as a way to create new resources, businesses and products from waste. The industry sphere highlights business opportunities on global scale, which are also evident in the government sphere. The government sphere connects circular economy to waste-related innovation policies targeted at industrial renewal, economic growth, investments and jobs. The university sphere, in turn, focuses on production and environmental issues, waste and knowledge, and is rather distinct from the two other spheres. The importance of the differing conceptions of circular economy is based on the logic of Triple Helix systems. Accordingly, sufficient consensus between the Triple Helix spheres can advance the application of the concept of circular economy beyond the individual spheres to achieve systemic changes.

Social innovation is concerned with social mobilization and impact, and is increasingly seen as an option to address sustainability challenges. Nevertheless, the concept of social innovation is quite open in character and requires empirical accommodation to establish how it differs from other types of innovation in this setting. This article contributes empirically to the concept of social innovation as it reviews categories of success factors of social innovation against those of five other innovation types (product, service, governmental, organizational, system) in 202 innovation cases that focus on climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials. Statistical analysis with contingency tables is applied to examine the distribution of five kinds of success factors across the innovation types: economic, environmental, political, social, and technological. The results confirm empirically that social innovation is indeed a distinct type of innovation. There are statistically significant differences in the distribution of categories of success factors between social innovation on the one hand and product, service and governance innovation on the other. In addition to the prevalence of social success factors, social innovation is characterized by a lesser emphasis on political and technological success factors.

Climate targets call for novel policy measures to facilitate widespread adoption of low-carbon solutions and innovations. The literature on socio-technical systems argues that experimentation has a prominent role in enabling sustainability transition. Experiments represent ways of testing new ideas and methods across a wide range of policy fields. Governance experiments in particular can support accelerated diffusion of new solutions, because they integrate policy with innovations. Here, types of success factors in the implementation of governance experiments to mitigate climate change are examined. Statistical analysis of sustainability innovations in the 28 European Union countries indicates that the types of success factors in governance experiments differ from those of product and social experiments. Governance experimentation is more positioned within socio-technical regimes than in strategic niches. These results suggest that governance experiments may indeed provide new transition opportunities towards low-carbon societies.

Lack of Congruence between European Citizen Perspectives and Policies on Circular Economy