DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/su13020734

Summary
The central point in this article is that energy system transition can be initiated by a team of individuals interacting entrepreneurially beyond their different home-grounds in business, research, or regional development. Such entrepreneurial engagement of insiders with belongings to an established socio-technical system has not been captured in prevalent sustainability transitions or entrepreneurship perspectives. Insiders have mostly been expected to act within (and not outside) of their role expectations. This study investigates who individuals initiating energy transition are, what motives they have, and how they accomplish institutional change. The purpose is to qualify a perspective that can help us better appreciate how transitions, such as in energy systems, can be initiated. The new perspective recognizes the importance of insiders, their personal sustainability beliefs, their choice to teamwork entrepreneurially, and their narratives about the initiative affecting institutional change. It explains how transition in a heavily regulated Swedish energy system can occur. Implications are drawn for research, policy and entrepreneurial teamwork.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
This article contributes to the understanding of sustainability transitions within socio-technological systems by introducing the role of intrapreneurs. In a way this combines a bottom-up with a top down perpsective on system changes. The intrapreneur is driven by ideas that are new to the organization/system within they are working, but building on communication within existing relationships they manage to influence the decision making positions to change directions. The article relates to and supplement other theoretical approaches to socio-technical system transitions.

Point of Strength
This article provides good examples on how sustainability transitions within socio-technical systems might be studied and could be recommended to students planning their approach to a thesis work.