As often with research – and life – we have not ended up where we expected. The original
aim of the Lowcarbonworks project was to explore what it was that enabled and hindered
the adoption of low carbon technologies. We wanted to work closely with people in business
organisations (to which we soon added local authorities); with academics developing low
carbon technologies; and with economists to explore the relationship between the broad sweep
of technological development and investment cycles and the detailed day to day management
practices involved in introducing low carbon technologies in organisational contexts.
We were sure that the development of a low carbon future was more than a technological
issue and that there would be an important relationship between macro trends – technological,
economic and political – and micro practices of managing change. We proposed that moments
of potential transformation exist in the wider economic and technological context and we
wanted to learn how to seize and respond to such moments in a creative fashion.