Frameworks, methods, and tools from the Lab's research, published openly for innovators, funders, and researchers to use.
Transitions Lab publishes its frameworks and methods openly, because a good way of understanding the world is more useful in the world than in a drawer. These resources set out how the Lab thinks and works: the frameworks behind our analysis, the methods behind our measurement, and the tools behind our fieldwork.
Free to download, use, and cite with attribution.
The Human Side of Technology →
Social science and human behaviour: why people adopt, resist, trust, and abandon technologies, and why none of it shows up in the specification. Anchored to Simon, Kahneman-Tversky, Davis, Ajzen, Rogers, Slovic, Pinch-Bijker, Hughes, Shove, Thaler-Sunstein and others. Six clusters, from how people decide to who gets left out. The lens the Lab leads with.
Bypass, Repurpose, Weaken. The Lab's signature strategic framework: a mechanism-based typology of how a niche technology engages an entrenched regime, classifying each strategy by what it does to a specific lock-in barrier, and matching mechanisms to barriers. A working tool for innovators and funders, grounded in field research.
Reading a Transition: A Primer →
The Lab's intellectual foundation, set out plainly: what a socio-technical system is, why the human side comes first, the recurring dynamics to look for in any transition, and how to turn that reading into evidence.
The Economics of Transitions →
A working glossary of the economic ideas that decide whether a technology actually lands, each anchored to its canonical source (Coase, Akerlof, Arthur, Teece, Williamson and others) and tied to a Lab case where the concept applies. Seven clusters, from lock-in and market structure to distribution and who is left out.
Technology & Innovation Dynamics →
The management-of-technology companion to the economics map: how a technology itself evolves, how firms compete to shape and own it, and what decides whether an innovation displaces the incumbent or dies in the attempt. Anchored to Foster, Utterback, Henderson-Clark, Christensen, Teece, Cohen-Levinthal, Rogers, Geels and others. Five clusters, from the shape of technological change to the bridge to socio-technical transitions.
TRL and SRL: The Two Axes of Readiness →
A full explainer of Technology Readiness Levels and Societal Readiness Levels, with academic references: where each came from, what the nine levels mean, and why reading both together is essential. Includes two downloadable guides.
Technology Readiness Levels, explained →
The origins (NASA, Sadin 1974, Mankins 1995), the nine-level scale, what TRL does well, and the crucial dimension it leaves out. Fully referenced.
Societal Readiness Levels, explained →
The social counterpart to TRL, and the framework closest to the Lab's work: origins (Innovation Fund Denmark 2018, Bruno et al. 2020, Bernstein et al. 2022), the nine-level scale, and why SRL decides success as often as the technology does. Fully referenced.
Measuring What Actually Changed →
The Lab's methodology for field research and impact measurement: the five-stage method (Scope, Design, Collect, Analyse & benchmark, Deliver), read across the Reach, Depth, and Experience dimensions, and the baseline discipline that separates real impact measurement from after-the-fact assertion.
Making Data Mean Something: The Lab's Data-Analysis Method →
How the Lab turns raw interviews, surveys, and observational data into defensible findings: the coding workflow, two-pass reconciliation, cross-respondent synthesis, and the discipline of naming disconfirming cases explicitly.
Ethics & Consent in the Field →
The Lab's working standard for doing primary research with people, honestly and safely: the four principles, informed consent done properly, power and vulnerability in the field, and data protection from collection to deletion.
A demonstration of the depth the Lab reaches in qualitative fieldwork: the "five levels down" principle, the funnel structure of a session, and the probing techniques that get from surface fact to lived meaning. Also available as a web page.
European Impact-Tracking Template →
A fill-in framework for measuring the before-and-after impact of a European project, demonstration, or socially innovative action: set up at the start, run while the work is live, closed out with proof.
Strata — satellite baselines for critical raw materials sites →
Full-screen app · 65 demo sites
An independent, open record of what happens on the ground at Europe's critical raw materials Strategic Projects, from a pre-construction baseline through every year of operation. Six annual indicators (disturbed footprint, buffer vegetation loss, water and tailings extent, ground motion, land converted, downstream water colour), one method for every site, built entirely on Copernicus data. Launch the app, read the guide, the method and data sources, or the companion paper.
Use them, adapt them to your work, and cite Transitions Lab. Built to be picked up and applied.
A commissioned study applies these to your specific question, in your specific context, with independent evidence.
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The Lab is an independent research team, not an advocacy organisation. We do not campaign, endorse products, or accept commissions where a finding is expected in advance. Where a partner's own theory of change is what needs testing, that is a legitimate engagement, and the Lab tests it honestly.