ABSTRACT

Growing urban populations, climate change, drought, and ageing infrastructures increase pressure on water delivery. This prompts the search for innovations, with incumbents increasingly attempting to enable and steer ‘experimental’ approaches. Historically, incumbents were assumed to be largely resistant to potentially disruptive innovations. However, their strategic orientations may be changing due to the urgency of sustainability challenges leading to increased experimentation. This change raises a question about how incumbents influence experiments in particular directions while neglecting or discouraging others. This research centers on the ‘La Kretz Innovation Campus’, and three experiments therein, partly established by the incumbent water utility in Los Angeles. It explores how creating an internal ‘protective space’ for experimentation generates struggles over institutional changes necessary for such experiments to thrive. Conceptualizing ‘incumbent-enabled experimentation’ as a set of practices nested within novel institutional, organizational, and political arrangements reveals the internal tensions incumbents face when seeking more sustainable directions.

摘要

城市人口的增长、气候变化、干旱和基础设施老化增加了供水压力。这促使人们寻求创新，现有企业越来越多地尝试启用和引导“实验性”方法。从历史上看，现有企业被认为在很大程度上抵制潜在的颠覆性创新。然而，由于可持续性挑战的紧迫性导致实验的增加，他们的战略方向可能正在发生变化。这一变化引发了一个问题：现任者如何影响特定方向的实验，同时忽视或阻止其他方向的实验。这项研究以“La Kretz 创新园区”和其中的三个实验为中心，部分实验是由洛杉矶现有的自来水公司建立的。它探讨了为实验创造一个内部“保护空间”如何引发对此类实验蓬勃发展所必需的制度变革的斗争。将“现任者推动的实验”概念化为一套嵌套在新颖的制度、组织和政治安排中的实践，揭示了现任者在寻求更可持续的方向时面临的内部紧张局势。