Social innovation is gaining attention as a pivotal dimension of socio-technical transitions with renewable energy prosumerism as a prominent example. However, this example also highlights that social innovation evokes concerns about purposes, beneficiaries, normative dilemmas and legitimacy. This paper addresses recent calls to confront the perceived ‘dark sides’ of social innovations. As debates on these dark sides often get stuck in either naive optimism or paralyzing critique, the paper investigates how transitions theory can inform nuanced understandings. The key concept is transitions directionality. The analysis shows how it conceptualizes the dark sides as manifestations of socio-technical path dependence, as disempowering ideological ‘landscape’ factors, as internal contradictions within institutionally complex regimes, as niche-regime dialectics, and as transition phases. Rather than proposing a particular normative position, the paper presents a heuristic that supports well-considered engagement with the dark sides.

社会创新作为社会技术转型的关键维度而受到关注，可再生能源产消主义就是一个突出的例子。然而，这个例子也凸显了社会创新引发了对目的、受益人、规范困境和合法性的担忧。本文讨论了最近关于直面社会创新的“阴暗面”的呼吁。由于关于这些阴暗面的争论常常陷入天真的乐观主义或瘫痪的批评之中，本文研究了转型理论如何能够提供细致入微的理解。关键概念是转换方向性。分析表明，它如何将阴暗面概念化为社会技术路径依赖的表现、剥夺权力的意识形态“景观”因素、制度复杂政权内的内部矛盾、作为利基政权辩证法和过渡阶段。该论文并没有提出特定的规范立场，而是提出了一种启发式方法，支持与黑暗面进行深思熟虑的接触。