Title: Orchestrating a new industrial field. The case of the Finnish wood-based bioeconomy

Authors: Kari Lilja; Eli Moen

Addresses: Aalto University School of Business, P.O. Box 21230, FI-00076 Aalto, Finland ' BI Norwegian Business School, N-0442 Oslo, Norway

Abstract: The article's focus is on how companies and institutions interact and cooperate in order to develop the wood-based bioeconomy field. Based on a case study of the Finnish forest sector, the paper shows that shifting to sustainability requires processes of co-creation. As radical innovation requires complementary competences, companies have had to cooperate with a large number of actors. By interacting with multiple actors at multiple levels, both companies and institutions have engaged in new types of activities that have led to a change in their respective roles. By taking on responsibility for developing the new industrial field, both companies and institutions act as orchestrators for mobilising a large number of public and private actors. Subsequently, the paper argues that this interaction has produced a new type of complementarity between companies and institutions facilitating the development of the new industrial field.

Keywords: forest industry companies; bioeconomy; biorefineries; national innovation system; co-creation; sustainability; actor-centred institutionalism; dynamic complementarities; start-ups.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBE.2017.087975

International Journal of Business Environment, 2017 Vol.9 No.3, pp.266 - 278

Received: 06 Nov 2016
Accepted: 18 Jun 2017

Published online: 13 Nov 2017 *

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