37 Driving Sustainable Innovation: Introducing the Societal Readiness Level SRL Societal Readiness Level 5 BIOLOC promotes new solutions rooted in the real needs of local communities to achieve long-term impact. At the regional level, innovation often occurs along the four sectors of the Quadruple Helix model: public institutions, private businesses, civil society, and academia. These actors shape local development pathways through co-creation to match the region’s unique characteristics and objectives. The maturity of innovations is often understood in terms of technological development, institutional support, and available resources. However, the ability of a territory to adopt and integrate new solutions depends on its societal structure: mainstream innovation strategies often underestimate the importance of society’s willingness to adapt to change. Innovation does not happen in a vacuum: its adoption and sustainability are not only conditional on funding or technical expertise. Local culture, openness to change, and societal readiness are fundamental aspects. For this reason, BIOLOC has been developing the Societal Readiness Level to complement mainstreaming assessments of technological maturity. BIOLOC built the SRL on the understanding that social, political, and economic contexts are crucial for adopting new biobased technologies. A shared vision of the desired state of a new solution is essential to define its opportunity space. This vision must be explored, co-designed, or negotiated. In short, readiness is identified as a relative concept, shaped by the goals set by the stakeholders.
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