Organizations are increasing the use of partnerships but improved models addressing the sharing of profits and risks are needed to foster innovations in networked new product development. We have used a case study approach to explore the implementation of profit- and risk-sharing mechanisms in a virtual enterprise. Lack of a shared vision may have been the most important cause for the early decomposition of the virtual enterprise. Therefore, the trust did not start to accumulate during the cooperation. This would have been imperative for the implementation of profit sharing mechanisms, because risk attitudes seemed to favor hierarchical rewarding mechanisms.

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A model of sociotechnical change takes into account different sociotechnical configurations and their interactions in a multi-level framework consisting of three major levels: niche innovations, a sociotechnical regime and a sociotechnical landscape. The sociotechnical changes can be analysed by studying the transition pathways along different multi-level interactions. The pressure from the landscape level and niche-innovations from the bottom level reinforce the relationships and operations on the regime level. This paper discusses the results of the study and illustrates the on-going development and the future changes in sociotechnical regimes of electric mobility in Finland. The regime changes have been analysed using a three-level perspective. The levels comprise an industry level, a value networks level and an enduser level. The results of the regime analysis show that there is a great deal of uncertainty in the operation environment and that new actors and new business models are needed to for the system to work properly.According to earlier research, sociotechnical transition pathways can be categorised based on the environmental change and the type of transition. In the case of electric mobility, the transition does not fit directly with any of the category types. Electric mobility will most likely follow the reconfiguration transition pathway. The changes in Finland are taking place slowly. This development can be aggregated via governmental support and incentives for organisations and consumers.