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This paper addresses the scope for more integrated general analysis of diversity in science, technology and society. It proposes a framework recognizing three necessary but individually insufficient properties of diversity. Based on 10 quality criteria, it suggests a general quantitative non-parametric diversity heuristic. This allows the systematic exploration of diversity under different perspectives, including divergent conceptions of relevant attributes and contrasting weightings on different diversity properties. It is shown how this heuristic may be used to explore different possible trade-offs between diversity and other aspects of interest, including portfolio interactions. The resulting approach offers a way to be more systematic and transparent in the treatment of scientific and technological diversity in a range of fields, including conservation management, research governance, energy policy and sustainable innovation.

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Technology-focused literature on socio-technical transitions shares some of the complex systems sensibilities of social-ecological systems research. We contend that the sharing of lessons between these areas of study must attend particularly to the common governance challenges that confront both approaches. Here, we focus on critical experience arising from reactions to a transition management approach to governing sustainable socio-technical transformations. Questions over who governs, whose system framings count, and whose sustainability gets prioritized are all pertinent to social-ecological systems research. We conclude that future research in both areas should deal more centrally and explicitly with these inherently political dimensions of sustainability.

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