Bridging incompatible regimes: how the formation of intermediary regimes drives system innovation

System innovations, comprising changes of socio-technical networks, rules and routines governing particular fields of practice, are generally regarded as essential to a transition towards sustainability. Different scholars have tried to unravel the pathways of system innovations in order to understand how system innovations can be stimulated or facilitated as part of transition management. This paper aims to contribute to the knowledge on system innovation pathways by studying the development of care farming as cross-sector system innovation. Care farming is a rapidly expanding form of multifunctional agriculture that combines agricultural production with offering day-care to a diversity of clients. It emerged when a few pioneers started to provide care services at their farms and successfully integrated the different regimes governing the quite distinct fields of agriculture and care. Since then, the number of care farms increased dramatically. A new intermediate care farming regime evolved comprising new rules and routines, embedded in regionally and nationally organized networks of care farmers which are increasingly acknowledged by the healthcare sector. Our findings suggest that at a niche level farmer strategies of (individual and collective) alignment and self empowerment facilitate the development and maturation of a new regime. At a regime level supporting pioneers, creating room for experimentation, and looking beyond sector borders are factors that contribute to the successful realisation of system innovations