From Disruptive Technologies to Transformative 
Socio-Technical change: The Cases of the Platform and Sharing Economy

A Public Lecture by Dr. Matthias Weber 

(the slides can be downloaded from here)

Thursday, January 21st 2016 at 16.30-18.00
Hall G-112 PWC, Chydenia, Aalto School of Economics,
Runeberginkatu 22–24, 00100 Helsinki

Abstract

Innovation has fundamentally transformed economic structures several times in history, with new techno-economic paradigms having a disruptive effect on our ways of producing, working and living over the past few centuries. While some anticipate the next disruptive wave to result from scientific breakthroughs, others stress the importance of new organizational and institutional models as keys to unleashing the transformative potential of new technology. This latter aspect has been very prominent in research on service innovation, but also by work on socio-technical transitions. More recently, concepts like the platform or the sharing economy have proposed as being at the core of disruptive change in society and economy. 

Based on historical examples and theoretical perspectives on how transformative change in society and economic arises, recent developments in service innovation, in socio-technical transitions, and in platform and sharing economy will be positioned and assessed in terms of the underlying forces and mechanisms driving transformative change. Consequences with regard to the strategies for managing and governing these novel developments will be highlighted. Finally, implications will be discussed with regard to the possibilities and limitations of foresight approaches to underpin policies for addressing transformative developments in society and economy.

The Public Lecture is organized by the Systems Analysis Laboratory research group at the Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis of Aalto University School of Science in collaboration with the Platform Value Now research project which is funded by the Strategic Research Council of the Academy of Finland. 

Background

Dr. Matthias Weber  is the Head of Unit of the Foresight & Governance Research Area at the Austrian Institute of Technology. 

Weber is one of the leading scholars in the areas of foresight and innovation management. He has been responsible for a large array of high-impact research projects and published extensively in leading journals. He has also advised the European Commission on topics related to research and innovation policy. At present, he is the Vice-Chair of the Expert Group on Strategic Foresight for Research and Innovation Policy for Horizon 2020.

Participation

The Public Lecture is open to all interested participants, but those planning to attend are kindly requested to send an email to Ville Eloranta (firstname.lastname@aalto.fi).

After the lecture there will be an opportunity for informal discussions with Dr. Weber and the other participants while enjoying some refreshments. 

At noon on Friday, 22 January 2016, Dr. Weber will be the official opponent in the public defence of Mikko Dufva's Doctoral Dissertation entitled Knowledge Creation in Foresight: A Practice- and Systems-Oriented View (Lecture Hall H304, Otakaari 1). Those attending the Public Lecture are most welcome to attend this public defence (lecture hall H304, Otakaari 1, Espoo).  

Aalto Systems Forum

The growing challenge of our time is the need to have the ability to see and manage wholes, i.e. systems. The Aalto Systems Forum aims to be a platform of dialogue for practitioners and reasearchers to share the latest results of the field by top international scholars.

Aalto Systems Forum is organized by the Systems Analysis Laboratory research group at the Department of Mathematics and Systems Analysis of Aalto University School of Science. http://www.sal.hut.fi/en/aaltosystemsforum /