had a leading proactive role. They worked with regional Environment Agency officers on trials to co-produce evidence that was used in the permitting process, while they also lobbied the government and participate in consultations to increase pressure on councils to divert waste from landfill, to be recognised as a sector that could use RDF, and to speed up the permitting and trialling process. Finally, in the case of waste oils and fats, the company minimised contact to governments as much as possible and they only made limited attempts to change regulation to interactions with a small number of trade associations.
Figure 7.5: Ego-networks of the three case study companies. Although the network data are likely to be incomplete, there are still clear differences in the network characteristics that relate to the innovation and collaboration strategies of the individual companies. Legend: The four rectangles are case study companies;
RP are resource partners; TA are trade associations; CO are other companies; Black disks are Humber-based governments; Grey disks are national governments; White disks are EU/ outside EU governments; Triangles are local communities/ NGOs. Lines are social/ metabolic relations; Dotted are relations involved in the biowaste-to-resource innovation cases.
7.5 Linking top-down and bottom-up processes
The results demonstrate the relations between context dynamics, the evolution of industrial symbiosis networks, and the developments within companies. Their analysis reveals the variation in the responses of companies to contextual dynamics, drawing attention to the significance of understanding these micro-perspectives in the evolution of industrial symbiosis. In the attempt to clarify whether innovation could increase simultaneously with the establishment of collaboration and industrial symbiosis as common practices, the results
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indicate that the time-scale over which these processes were analysed can significantly influence the outcomes. By analysing these symbiotic innovations from the perspective of long-term on-going developments within the companies, it demonstrates that the studied resource synergies and development of associated collaborations are part of longer-term processes of increasing innovation while collaboration and industrial symbiosis were already common practices. Finally, in the uptake of industrial symbiosis some companies experienced challenges resulting from poor integration of dynamics within the governmental and economical context, such as contradicting policy and regulation, bottlenecks in the governance to realise the symbiotic innovations, and less advanced development of recycling markets compared to the European mainland. Companies could overcome such challenges by cultivating network relations at multiple governmental levels.
Such strategy would support the harmonisation of context-, network- and business-dynamics, which appeared important for the development of industrial symbiosis.
7.5.1 Variation in companies’ responses to contextual dynamics
This research demonstrated variation in the responses of companies to contextual dynamics (Andrews 2000). The three companies were active in different sectors and markets, consuming and producing different resources, and with different innovation strategies as well as engagement strategies for government. Hence it is no surprise that companies were not equally affected by the contextual dynamics, resulting from the UK government’s actions regarding climate change, waste, and energy and resource security as well as the large-scale economic trends of energy and resource prices and economic growth (also see, Hoffman 2003). For instance, in the waste-oil and waste oils and fuels cases (Section 7.4.2.1 and 7.4.2.3) the innovation processes were initiated in response to regulatory changes and the companies continued to innovate for economic reasons. Conversely, in the RDF case (Section 7.4.2.2) the increasing energy prices motivated the company to search for alternative energy supply, carbon taxes increased prices further and then the economic crisis sped up the adoption of the identified innovation. This also shows a more detailed and complex combined role of economic and government contextual changes; both were important though in different proportions for different companies (Desrochers 2004; Boons 2008). It also suggests that it is not only important to understand context sensitivities
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(Jensen et al. 2011b), but also to understand how the diversity in companies’ context dependencies and management strategies results in emergent ‘replies’ to context dynamics.
This is an area, also referred to as the ‘micro-perspective’, which requires further research (Andrews 2000; Hoffman 2003).
Table 7.2: Overview of the case study results that were discussed in 7.4.2.1 –7. 4.2.3 7.4.2.1: Waste oil 7.4.2.2: Refuse
company changed Possibly since 1990s No Yes since 2003
Industrial symbiosis became
company’s studied innovation No Yes leading role Yes contributed
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The results also clearly show that companies had to act, or had to evolve, it was not a choice whether to innovate or not. This necessity to adopt resource innovations differs from previous studies which suggested scenarios in which these innovations were optional (Paquin et al. 2014; Short et al. 2014) and mirrors the ‘develop or decay’ processes that take place within biological systems that are undergoing succession (Jensen et al. 2011b). The companies had to innovate because they were presented with potentially terminal crises in terms of economic recession or government regulation demanding acute changes in supply chains. This is similar to Pakarinen et al. (2010) analyses that times of crises motivated the uptake of industrial symbiosis. This indicates that, despite the many negative sides those crises may have had, crises can have positive side-effects because they can function as starting points for increasing resource efficiency or even whole transitions towards increased innovativeness and sustainability. It was as if the crises created a window of opportunity for lasting change in business strategies (perhaps giving more empirical weight within industrial symbiosis to ideas of ‘creative destruction’ during the ‘release’ phase in the complex adaptive cycles in, Schumpeter 1934; Gunderson and Holling 2002)
7.5.2 Occurrence of innovativeness and common practices
This study attempted to shed new light on the question whether innovation could increase simultaneously with the establishment of collaboration and industrial symbiosis as common practices (Coleman 1988; Burt 1992; Nooteboom and Gilsing 2004). The results indicated that the time-scale over which these processes were analysed could significantly influence the outcomes. Table 7.2 shows that the studied industrial symbioses were replicated and/or followed by more innovations with the same resource. At the same time the studied industrial symbiosis practice evolved to become a common practice in the case of RDF.
Furthermore, in the case of RDF and waste oil, the companies developed a large number of new collaborations which might perhaps be interpreted as the development of a collaborative culture. Such interpretation, however, would be based on the assumption that the companies did not have such collaborative practices before. This research indicated that such assumption would be incorrect. In fact, the companies all had been on long-term journeys towards more innovation which, moreover, already included collaborations with a variety of actors. On top of that, both the companies in the waste oil and waste oils and fats
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cases were founded on the proposition of valorising waste resources. Similarly, the company in the RDF case was already engaged in industrial symbioses for several years. In sum, taking into account the long-term business processes, while the studied resource synergies did contribute to increased innovation, it could not be concluded that collaboration and industrial symbiosis became common practices as a result of these innovative synergies within the companies, let alone within their region or wider network (countering suggestions made by e.g., Ashton 2009; Doménech and Davies 2011a; Paquin and Howard-Grenville 2012). Consequently, no conclusions can be drawn regarding the question whether innovativeness increases simultaneously with establishing collaboration and industrial symbiosis as common practices. This gap in understanding requires further research, for instance with companies that had not been engaged in industrial symbiosis practices already, in combination with a more detailed analysis of the collaboration and innovation culture before and after the realisation of the synergy.
7.5.3 Network structures and strategies for government engagement
The results suggested that it was challenging to interact with governments when changes to the (implementation of the) regulatory framework were required for the biowaste-to-resource innovations. Network composition and engagement strategies were identified (Figure 7.5, Section 7.4.2.4). However, the network data were not sufficiently complete to assess associations with specific structural characteristics such as dyadic and triadic connections (Coleman 1988; Burt 1992; Nooteboom and Gilsing 2004). Clearly there is space for further research efforts on the role of network structures in bottom-up processes during the uptake of industrial symbiosis. Similarly, more research is needed on the ways in which top-down processes could respond to business initiatives in order to prevent blocking industrial symbiosis. This observation adds to the discussion about practical recommendations for iterative and/or balanced strategies to promote resource synergies (Section 7.2.1) (e.g., Costa and Ferrão 2010; Lehtoranta et al. 2011; Koskela et al. 2013), by highlighting areas where bottom-up and top-down processes could be better aligned.
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7.5.4 Harmonising bottom-up and top-down processes
In the uptake of industrial symbiosis some companies experienced challenges resulting from poor integration of dynamics within the governmental and economical context. For instance, the waste-oil case demonstrated that landfill reduction targets were not well aligned with other areas of waste regulation. Not only did the new waste-definitions lead to more wasted resources, it also constrained the technologies that could be used to divert waste from landfill in the UK while in other European countries the same technologies were allowed under the same EU directive. Such constraints can have far reaching effects. The case studies suggested that various recycling markets emerged later in the UK than in mainland Europe. For instance, the RDF was imported at first while the biofuels produced from waste oils and fats were initially exported to mainland Europe. Furthermore, in the waste-oil case the usage of the resource was initially impossible within the UK. The UK being a late adopter of these technologies is an issue when companies in other countries can adopt them sooner, reach economies of scales to reduce costs and take significant market share before companies in the UK had a chance to join the market. Other challenges resulting from ill-aligned contextual processes include the increasing bottleneck within the regional governance system to support resource innovations (Velenturf 2016b; Chapter 6) as well as the cease in funding for NISP just when industrial symbiosis was gaining momentum within government and industry (Velenturf and Jensen Forthcoming). As discussed in the preceding paragraph, companies can overcome such challenges by cultivating network relations at multiple governmental levels. For instance, the RDF case overcame the barriers of the underdeveloped market and regulation in the UK by engaging governments and potential RDF-suppliers to construct one part of the solution at a time.
Such approach of aligning heterogeneous elements of a system is similar to the co-evolutionary perspective reflected in transition literature, which may offer valuable research pathways for industrial symbiosis (Geels 2004; Laurentis 2015).
7.6 Conclusion
This paper has brought together empirical insights into the macro-, meso- and micro-level dynamics and provided qualitative insights into the linkages between these system levels