TRAFOBIT

TRAFOBIT investigates the role of so-called ‘bioclusters’ in which businesses, governments, research institutes and universities work together towards the bioeconomy that aims to replace our current fossil based sources of carbon with renewable ones. This is a daunting task that requires some profound changes in some of the existing economic and technological structures. Such profound changes will require not only incremental innovations that fit in the existing economic and technological structures, but also system innovations that attempt to redesign or influence these existing structures in a fundamental way.

The junior research group aims to explore these innovation processes that occur inside bioclusters and the interaction of bioclusters in their societal environment ranging from the local, regional, national and international level. They will work interdisciplinary by combining theoretical insights and methods from sociology, innovation science, ecology, ecological economics and mathematics. The research group will not only apply these existing methods, but it will also aim to contribute to the development of new innovative research methods through the development and application and adaptation of Social Network Analysis and statistical network models to the study of transitions.

• German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany