Technological Innovation Systems
Also known as: TIS analysis, Technological innovation system approach, Functional dynamics scheme
Technological Innovation Systems (TIS) analysis studies the emergence, growth, and performance of a specific technology by treating it as a system of actors, networks, and institutions that interact to generate, diffuse, and use that technology. Building on the systems-of-innovation tradition, the influential scheme of Bergek and colleagues combines a structural account of the system's components with a functional analysis of the key processes—or functions—that an innovation system must perform, then compares achieved with desired functionality to diagnose inducement and blocking mechanisms and derive policy.
Key highlights
- Combines a structural and a functional view, explaining not just what an innovation system contains but how well it actually works.
- Provides a clear, replicable scheme of analysis that links diagnosis (functions) to intervention (inducement and blocking mechanisms and policy).
- Focuses on technology-specific dynamics, capturing formative-phase processes that national or sectoral innovation-system lenses miss.
- Supports technology-specific innovation policy with concrete, phase-sensitive recommendations.
- Has accumulated a large comparative empirical base across many emerging technologies and countries.
Intuition
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How it works
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When to use it
Use TIS analysis when you want to understand why a particular emerging technology is developing well or poorly and what policy could accelerate it, and when you can assemble mixed evidence on its actors, networks, institutions, and functions. It suits the study of technologies in their formative phase—renewables, fuel cells, electric vehicles, biotech—and the design of technology-specific innovation policy. TIS assumes that performance can be understood through a defined set of system functions and that boundaries can be sensibly drawn around one technology. It is less appropriate for analysing whole sectors or national systems, for very mature technologies where the formative dynamics are over, or where the interest is in broad sociotechnical regime change rather than a single technology.
Strengths & limitations
- Combines a structural and a functional view, explaining not just what an innovation system contains but how well it actually works.
- Provides a clear, replicable scheme of analysis that links diagnosis (functions) to intervention (inducement and blocking mechanisms and policy).
- Focuses on technology-specific dynamics, capturing formative-phase processes that national or sectoral innovation-system lenses miss.
- Supports technology-specific innovation policy with concrete, phase-sensitive recommendations.
- Has accumulated a large comparative empirical base across many emerging technologies and countries.
- Drawing the system boundary is a consequential judgement call, and different boundaries can yield different diagnoses of the same technology.
- The functions are partly overlapping and their measurement is often qualitative, raising questions of comparability across studies.
- Its technology-specific focus can underplay competition and interaction between rival TIS and the surrounding sectoral or geographical context.
- It says less about the deeper landscape and regime dynamics and about politics and power than transition frameworks such as the MLP.
Common pitfalls
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Applications
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Frequently asked
What are the structural components of a TIS?
Three classes. Actors—firms (incumbents and entrants), universities and research institutes, public bodies, users, and industry associations. Networks—the learning, supply, political, and standard-setting relationships connecting actors. Institutions—the formal rules (regulations, standards, policies) and informal norms and cognitive routines that shape behaviour. These components form the system's anatomy; the analysis then asks how well that anatomy performs its functions.
How does TIS analysis differ from Innovation System Functions Analysis?
They are closely related and share the functions vocabulary, but differ in emphasis. The Bergek et al. TIS scheme is the broader analytic frame: it starts from structural components, assesses the functional pattern, compares achieved with desired functionality, and diagnoses inducement and blocking mechanisms to derive policy. The functions-of-innovation-systems approach associated with Hekkert and Suurs focuses more tightly on the seven functions and operationalises them through event-history analysis and 'motors' of cumulative causation. In practice the two are often combined; this library cross-links them.
What is the difference between a TIS and a national innovation system?
A national innovation system takes a country as the unit of analysis and studies how its overall institutional and organisational set-up supports innovation across all sectors. A technological innovation system takes a single technology or knowledge field as the unit and studies the actors, networks, institutions, and functions specific to it, often across national borders. TIS is therefore better suited to explaining the rise of a particular emerging technology, whereas national systems explain broad cross-sector innovative performance.
Sources
- 1.Bergek, A., Jacobsson, S., Carlsson, B., Lindmark, S., & Rickne, A. (2008). Analyzing the functional dynamics of technological innovation systems: a scheme of analysis. Research Policy, 37(3), 407-429.
- 2.Hekkert, M. P., Suurs, R. A. A., Negro, S. O., Kuhlmann, S., & Smits, R. E. H. M. (2007). Functions of innovation systems: a new approach for analysing technological change. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 74(4), 413-432.
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ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Technological Innovation Systems. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/science-technology-studies/technological-innovation-systems