1. On innovations and their system-level theorization

Frank Geels, a widely recognized foundational figure in socio-technical transitions research, recently published an Intelligence Briefing titled Why sustainability transitions are starting to accelerate via technical innovations but not through social innovations: five reasons and some critiques of transformations research. In the briefing, he argues that ‘technical innovations offer greater potential than purely social innovations to accelerate sustainability transformations in the next 5–10 years’ and that ‘the socio-technical transitions framework seems better suited and more policy relevant for the topic of acceleration [of relevant changes] than influential approaches in the transformations literature’ (Geels, Reference Geels2026). Coming from a scholar best known for theorizing the interplay between technical and social factors, and their capacity to enable or impede transformative change, these claims may appear more straightforward than one might expect.

Geels's central claim is that technical innovations align more readily than social innovations with key acceleration mechanisms and therefore offer greater near-term potential to address pressing sustainability threats. Although he does not explicitly put technical and social innovations, nor transition and transformation theories, in order of priority, the structure and style of his argumentation may nevertheless invite such a reading. This impression arises partly because technical innovation is presented as closely associated with well-established transitions scholarship, whereas social innovation is mapped onto transformations research, which in his reading suffers from limited conceptual clarity. The sense of a theoretical juxtaposition is further reinforced by Geels’s characterization of transformation-oriented approaches such as sufficiency, frugality, and degrowth as reliant on ‘wishful thinking’ and likely to remain unappealing ‘except perhaps for a minority of deep green citizens and academics’ (Geels, Reference Geels2026).

In this commentary, I argue that sustainability transition and transformation are best understood as distinct conceptualizations that serve different analytical purposes and have different intellectual histories, aims, strengths, and limitations. For this reason, their (perhaps unintended) juxtaposition is not only unnecessary but also potentially counterproductive. I first outline the broad development of these traditions and clarify their key conceptual and analytical differences, and after that, I argue for treating transitions and transformations as complementary perspectives. I conclude by reflecting on implications for future theorizing of societal change processes.

2. Comparing transition and transformation theories

Contemporary societies face a sustainability polycrisis: multiple, simultaneous, and deeply interconnected developments, ranging from climate change, chemical pollution, and biodiversity loss to the structural overconsumption of planetary resources, widening social inequalities, health challenges, and geopolitical conflicts (Mark et al., Reference Mark, Holder, Hoyer, Schoonover and Aldrich2025; Schweizer & Juhola, Reference Schweizer and Juhola2024). Because these challenges are systemic in nature, responses must also be systemic. Both transition and transformation theories seek to make sense of system-level dynamics, but they do so with different emphases and theoretical delineations. Recognizing these differences is an important starting point for assessing their respective roles and contributions in sustainability research and practice. It is also worth noting that sustainability transition and transformation have often been used interchangeably, almost as synonyms, which adds complexity to efforts to conceptualize and compare them (Hölscher et al., Reference Hölscher, Wittmayer and Loorbach2018).

In this commentary, I treat both transition and transformation theories as broad families of theories, concepts, and approaches that have been linked to sustainability in the literature. This necessarily entails a large degree of simplification. However, such synthesis is appropriate for the purposes of a short commentary because it enables a clearer articulation of the main points at stake.

By transition theories, I refer primarily to socio-technical transitions scholarship (e.g., Geels, Reference Geels2002; Smith et al., Reference Smith, Voß and Grin2010), and to the technological innovation systems approach (e.g., Bergek et al., Reference Bergek, Jacobsson, Carlsson, Lindmark and Rickne2008; Hekkert et al., Reference Hekkert, Suurs, Negro, Kuhlmann and Smits2007). By transformation theories, I refer to approaches that foreground more fundamental systems change and transformative systems understanding, including leverage points thinking (Meadows, Reference Meadows1999), transformative research for sustainability (Horcea-Milcu et al., Reference Horcea-Milcu, Dorresteijn, Leventon, Stojanovic, Lam, Lang, Moriggi, Raymond, Stålhammar, Weiser and Zimmermann2024), and established strands of sustainability change scholarship such as resilience thinking (Olsson et al., Reference Olsson, Galaz and Boonstra2014) and socio-ecological systems (Ostrom, Reference Ostrom2009). I compare these bodies of work along three dimensions: (1) their principal theoretical foci, (2) their spatial–temporal orientations, and (3) how they conceptualize and evaluate sustainability-oriented change.

3. Implications

Both sustainability transition and transformation scholarship seek to improve understanding of how more sustainable societal arrangements can be advanced across scales and contexts, and in this sense, they share a common agenda. At the same time, the two traditions have emerged from distinct intellectual histories, which have shaped differences in their theoretical emphases, spatial–temporal orientations, and in how sustainability-oriented change is conceptualized and evaluated. What, then, follows from the foregoing comparison of sustainability transition and transformation theories, particularly regarding the capacity of technical and social innovations to address or mitigate contemporary sustainability challenges? I highlight three points.

First, while I broadly agree with Geels (Reference Geels2026) that technical innovations are often better positioned than social innovations to activate key acceleration mechanisms, it would be unwise to place disproportionate reliance on technological change, especially if this entails deprioritizing social renewal. There is, at present, no basis for assuming that even significant technological advances would, on their own, be sufficient to bring socio-ecological systems to operate within planetary boundaries. Moreover, insofar as contemporary sustainability threats are driven to a substantial extent by consumption patterns and lifestyles among affluent and middle-class populations in the Global North (e.g., Chancel et al., Reference Chancel, Mohren, Bothe, Muti and Villaverde2025), it is difficult to assume that the necessary changes will primarily emerge from, or be accelerated by, technological development alone. In the context of a polycrisis, what is required is sustained societal commitment to advancing both technical and social innovations, even if the acceleration of the latter is more difficult to achieve.

Second, the relationship between technical and social innovation should not be framed as an either–or phenomenon. Rather, technical and social innovations are often intertwined through multiple mechanisms (e.g., Lyon et al., Reference Lyon, Gordon, Fagan, Gillson, Hatfield, Kabora, Martins, Pettersson, Redeker, Stringer, Thomas, Timberlake and Wei2026). For instance, technical innovations may foster social learning, which can subsequently enhance understanding of the types of technologies needed to address the polycrisis. In this sense, greater attention should be paid to how technical and social innovations may co-evolve, emerging hand in hand through mutually reinforcing processes of development and change. In practice, this requires a more nuanced understanding of diverse ways of knowing, being, and doing in the contexts of transition and transformation (e.g., West et al., Reference West, Haider, Hertz, Mancilla Garcia and Moore2024), as well as new approaches to fostering dialogue among different actors (e.g., Colloff et al., Reference Colloff, Gorddard, Abel, Locatelli, Wyborn, Butler, Lavorel, Van Kerkhoff, Meharg, Múnera-roldán, Bruley, Fedele, Wise and Dunlop2021).

Third, even if one accepts Geels’s (Reference Geels2026) suggestion that transitions scholarship may appear more conceptually developed than parts of the transformations literature, this does not warrant downplaying the kinds of complex system dynamics foregrounded in transformation-oriented approaches. Without an evaluative lens that relates innovations to their absolute sustainability implications, such as performance relative to ecological carrying capacity and critical social thresholds, we cannot credibly assess their contribution to sustainable development. Hence, we need analytical approaches that make it routine to judge whether theorized changes are adequate relative to the challenges they are intended to address.

Transition and transformation theories can indeed offer complementary perspectives on the same empirical phenomena, as for example Fisher et al. (Reference Fisher, Brondizio and Boyd2022) have previously proposed. That complementarity, however, is only productive when terminology, analytical reference points, and the specific aims of the analysis are made explicit.