Research on sustainability transitions has expanded rapidly in the last ten years, diversified in terms of topics and geographical applications, and deepened with respect to theories and methods. This article provides an extensive review and an updated research agenda for the field, classified into nine main themes: understanding transitions; power, agency and politics; governing transitions; civil society, culture and social movements; businesses and industries; transitions in practice and everyday life; geography of transitions; ethical aspects; and methodologies. The review shows that the scope of sustainability transitions research has broadened and connections to established disciplines have grown stronger. At the same time, we see that the grand challenges related to sustainability remain unsolved, calling for continued efforts and an acceleration of ongoing transitions. Transition studies can play a key role in this regard by creating new perspectives, approaches and understanding and helping to move society in the direction of sustainability.

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This paper explores the role of intermediaries in the development and appropriation of new technologies. We focus on intermediaries that facilitate user innovation, and the linking of user innovation into supply side activities. We review findings on intermediaries in some of our studies and other available literature to build a framework to explore of how intermediaries work in making innovation happen. We make sense of these processes by taking a long-term view of the dynamics of technology and market development using the social learning in technological innovation (SLTI) framework. Our primary concern is with innovation intermediaries and their core roles of configuring, facilitating and brokering technologies, uses and relationships in uncertain and emerging markets. We show the range of positions and influence they have along the supply-use axis in a number of different innovation contexts, and how they are able to bridge the user-developer innovation domains. Equipped with these insights, we explore in more depth how intermediaries affect the shape of new information and communication technologies and the importance of identifying and nurturing the user-side intermediaries that are crucial to innovation success.

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