Governing and Accelerating Transformative Entrepreneurship (GATE) (2015-2020)
Principal Investigator: Sarah Burch
Partners:
- Heike Schroeder, Senior Lecturer, School of International Development University of East Anglia
- Derk Loorbach, Professor and Director, Dutch Research Institute for Transitions, Erasmus University Rotterdam
- Niki Frantzeskaki, Senior Researcher and Lecturer, Dutch Research Institute for Transitions, Erasmus University Rotterdam
The alluring yet nebulous concept of transformative change is increasingly gaining traction in conversations about pathways to more sustainable futures and responses to climate change. This shift in focus from incremental change to potentially radical experiments in sustainability at multiple levels of governance suggests that new conceptual tools are needed to illuminate new types of actors, interests, and capacities at play. This collaborative research project draws upon a diverse suite of theoretical tools, derived from multi-level governance theory, sustainability transitions scholarship, and sustainability entrepreneurship literature, to interrogate the transformative potential of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the context of urban sustainability governance.
The GATE project is currently conducting a major survey of small businesses in Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to gain a better understanding of what motivates small businesses to innovate on sustainability.