The Deep Transitions Research Programme has launched its new podcast series. This biweekly podcast series will introduce a groundbreaking approach to the industrial transitions of the past, and provide a guide to how several of these momentous developments led us to the world as it is today.

The first episode, Everything you need to know about Deep Transitions (in a Nutshell), had Deep Transitions researchers Dr Laur Kanger and Dr Bipashyee Ghosh joined by host Geraldine Bloomfield, introducing their work on past industrial transitions up to the present day.

This week’s episode, Investing in the era of the Second Deep Transition: Johan Schot in Conversation with James Anderson, will dive in to the topic of how this understanding of gradual structural change can be applied to a world of investment banking obsessed with quarterly profits. Soundcloud is available here. And you can also listen on iTunes.

What can the worlds of finance and academia learn from each other? Will technological innovations like electric vehicles be enough to avert climate catastrophe, or will we need to reinvent social norms like the very concept of personal vehicle ownership entirely?

In this week’s episode, Investing in the era of the Second Deep Transition, project lead Professor Johan Schot and Baillie Gifford investment manager James Anderson develop the ideas discussed in our last episode, and delve into how they strive to see deeper than the surface ebb and flow of market movements. Instead, they favour a long-term understanding of the undercurrents driving the trajectory of society and industry. They cover the underlying trends of capital investment and systemic transitions, how they intersect, and the integral understanding these perspectives can offer each other.

If you are interested in learning more before the next episode is released, you can read the founding papers for Deep Transitions:

Deep transitions: Emergence, acceleration, stabilization and directionality

Deep transitions: Theorizing the long-term patterns of sociotechnical change

We have also produced a Guide to Deep Transitions explaining key terms and concepts.

In our next episode, due out on 1 April, we move on to introducing the projects that are running as part of the programme. Dr Phil Johnstone and Dr Caitriona McLeish will discuss their work investigating how the world wars set a path for our energy systems that endures today.