Beyond papermaking: technology and market shifts for wood-based biomass industries – management implications for large-scale industries

Abstract

Growing environmental concerns, emerging economies, and the strong uncertainties about future prices of fossil fuels as well as about CO₂ emissions contribute to a potential renaissance for biorefining industries. According to theories on technology shifts and innovations (e.g. [Utterback, J. M. 1994. Mastering the dynamics of innovation. How companies can seize opportunities under technological change. Harvard Business School Press]), heavy process industries like pulp and paper tend to be rigid towards disruptive innovations and instead focus on incremental innovations and economies of scale. However, a major empirical contribution from this case study demonstrates that some incumbents may escape the lock-in and form a new biomass development block. The study also contributes to academic as well as technology and innovation management perspectives in process-based and natural resource-based industries, where process innovations are tightly coupled with product innovations in inter-industry (vertical) linkages, the so-called development block.

Keywords:

• innovation management
• technology and market shifts
• industrial transformation
• pulp and paper
• development block

Funding

This work was supported by The Lars Erik Lundberg Foundation for Research and Education [grant number 12-2009].

Notes on contributors

Michael Novotny is PhD candidate at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Department of Industrial Economics and Management in Stockholm. His research area of interest is within the field of industrial dynamics/evolutionary economics and as such concerns understanding the mechanisms behind industrial and technological transformations in natural resource based industries (NRBI:s). In his dissertation his focus is on the industrial and technological transformation and innovation management issues of forest industries in general and pulp & paper industries in particular.

Staffan Laestadius is Professor of Industrial Dynamics, head of section for Industrial Dynamics and vice Dean of PhD programs at the ITM School at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH). His research interests focuses on the one hand on knowledge formation processes behind industrial and technical change and transformation, on the other on the sustainability conditions providing necessities as well as opportunities to fundamental industrial transformation.