206resources, policies may be captivated by established and dominant actors at the expense of those potential institutional entrepreneurs who intend to initiate change of a more divergent nature.

207Third-Generation Innovation Policy: System Transformation or Reinforcing. . .

The Role of Policy in Technology Transitions: Empirical

Illustrations

Innovation policies can be categorized as either a collection of support activities or various attempts to constructively deal with resistance and remove barriers. Traditionally, as briefly touched upon in the introduction, innovation policy has largely been a matter of various forms of R&D-related supporting activities (i.e., the first generation of innovation policy). As stated in previous theory section on system transformation, there is an obvious risk that the policymaking process ends up captivate to the regime rather than supporting the emergence of radical innovation in a certain niche. In light of this, some scholars have argued that the political economy of innovation policy tends to generate an overemphasis on supporting activities and that insufficient attention is devoted to handling resistance from vested interest groups (Potts et al., 2016; Sandström et al., 2019). In other words, there is an apparent risk that policy measures intended to promote change and renewal instead end up supporting the continuation