Disruption in sustainability transitions

Sustainability transitions have often been described to involve ‘disruptions’. However, many writings in this field have been rather imprecise about what disruption means in the context of transitions, beyond the disruption of status quo. In the literature, references to disruptions have ranged from a discourse on disruptive niche innovations (Wilson & Tyfield 2018) to disruptive landscape influences (Geels & Schot 2007). A systematic literature review conducted in 2020 revealed that the conceptualisation of disruption was often imprecise and empirical studies were oriented to the energy sector (Kivimaa et al. 2021). In this chapter, we build on this definition of disruption and complement the understanding by reviewing the most recent literature on disruption, adding to the initial review comprising 47 articles. This chapter provides much-needed clarity on the conceptual confusion that has ensued, and evaluates the links between the concept of disruption, and the ways in which mainstream technologies, practices and business models in socio-technical regimes need to be phased-out (Phil Johnstone & Hielscher 2017; Koretsky & van Lente 2020), destabilised (Karltorp & Sandén 2012; Turnheim & Geels 2013; Turnheim 2022) or decline (Koretsky et al. 2022; Novalia et al. 2022; Rosenbloom and Rinscheid 2020). We end by examining the relevance of the concept of disruption to emerging scholarly and societal debate on just transitions.