Individual Projects as Portals for Mainstreaming Niche Innovations
Individual Projects as Portals for Mainstreaming Niche Innovations
This chapter focuses on the “mainstreaming” process for sustainable innovations. By analyzing a particular construction project, it explores how a mainstream environment adopts niche innovations. This analysis provides a more detailed knowledge of how the diffusion of niche innovations actually takes place and how projects function as a portal for mainstreaming. The first section elaborates strategic niche management and the role of projects therein. This is followed by an introduction of the project studied here: the design and construction of a town hall in Leiderdorp, the Netherlands—a green project commissioned and delivered by mainstream actors. This chapter analyzes how both the environmentally sustainable construction niche and the conventional construction regime influenced this project. The final section concludes with how projects like the one studied help to understand the process of mainstreaming sustainable construction and how these processes can be improved.
Keywords: mainstreaming, sustainable innovations, niche innovations, niche management, Leiderdorp, projects
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