Sustainability challenges require experimenting with various types of sustainability innovations. Local and regional context conditions influence their diffusion. Our research question is: what are pathways for the transfer of sustainability innovations to other locations, and how do local and regional conditions enable this transfer? We use the notion of ‘harbours’ to conceptualise the combination of these conditions. In a comparative case study in four city-regions, analysing 48 experiments, we find that technological innovations travel easier around the globe compared to social innovations. For social innovations, the transferred knowledge has a more tacit character and the innovations are strongly embedded in the local cultural and institutional context. Signifiers may enable their translocal diffusion. Moreover, the results suggest that innovations are ‘translated’ rather than replicated. We find some important local and regional context conditions enabling transfer: cultural conditions, vibrant environments (such as festivals), networks and the presence of enabling regional actors.

可持续性挑战需要尝试各种类型的可持续性创新。地方和区域环境条件影响它们的传播。我们的研究问题是：将可持续性创新转移到其他地方的途径是什么，当地和区域条件如何促成这种转移？我们使用“港口”的概念来概念化这些条件的组合。在四个城市区域的比较案例研究中，分析了 48 个实验，我们发现与社会创新相比，技术创新更容易在全球传播。对于社会创新，转移的知识具有更隐性的特征，并且创新强烈地嵌入到当地的文化和制度环境中。能指可以使它们的跨域扩散成为可能。而且，结果表明，创新是“转化的”而不是复制的。我们发现一些重要的地方和区域背景条件促成了转移：文化条件、充满活力的环境（如节日）、网络和有利的区域参与者的存在。