The literature on intermediaries faces challenges regarding how to conceptualise and empirically demonstrate the system-level impact of intermediaries. Thus, researchers and policy analysts may experience difficulties in grasping the potential contributions of intermediaries beyond individual projects and firms to aggregate levels of an innovation system. This article combines innovation intermediary and technological innovation systems literature to develop fundamentals of an approach for analysing how organisations acting as intermediaries support firms in eco-innovation and potentially contribute to technological innovation system functions. The operationalisation of the analytical approach is illustrated using case studies on a total of eight support organisations acting as intermediaries in the region of Scania, Sweden and North Rhine Westphalia, Germany. For researchers and policy analysts, the analytical approach presented in this article offers the opportunity for a step-by-step, comprehensive and transparent analysis of different types of intermediaries, their roles, and potential contributions to innovation system functions.

Strategic spatial planning is important for developing long-termvisions and strategies towards regional and local sustainability.This paper explores if and how strategic spatial planning could beuseful for overcoming some barriers related to new sustainableways of heating residential areas, using district heating systemsbased on industrial excess heat. This longitudinal study builds oninterviews with municipal and private actors in six Swedishmunicipalities. It highlights that important barriers can beovercome by influencing the design and location of residentialdistricts and industrial activities. Further, it identifies missedopportunities in local spatial planning practice as stakeholders areinvolved late in the planning when much is set, leaving littlespace for stakeholders to have an impact. Consequently, theremight be a lack of knowledge and expertise in how such issuescould enhance planning. Strategic spatial planning could facilitateconditions for excess heat-based systems of district heating as itimplies a broader systems perspective which could enhance abroader planning scope. Plan programs could bring about morestrategic spatial planning processes as these require earlystakeholder involvement. If taking stakeholder involvement onestep further to stakeholder collaboration or co-production, aneven broader planning scope would be achieved.

Eco-innovation is an approach to environmental sustainability. However, the process of eco-innovation can be challenging especially for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Thus, SMEs might seek external support to tackle some of their challenges in eco-innovation. In this article, we focus on one type of organization providing and also assisting SMEs to access support, intermediaries, i.e. an organization or body that acts as an agent or broker in the innovation process. Intermediaries support firms in the innovation process through various generic and customised activities. To identify such activities and describe the roles intermediaries take in eco-innovation, we conducted interviews and documentation analysis on selected intermediaries in two regions – Scania, Sweden and North Rhine Westphalia, Germany. The identified roles among our cases include: (i) forecasting and road mapping, (ii) information gathering and dissemination, (iii) fostering networking and partnerships, (iv) prototyping and piloting, (v) technical consulting, (vi) resource mobilisation, (vii) commercialisation, and (viii) branding and legitimation. In relation to the specific characteristics of eco-innovations, the intermediary roles such as prototyping and piloting, information gathering and dissemination, and branding were directly targeted at validating the environmental benefits of eco-innovations to tackle their “double externality” challenge. However, we found little intermediation activities from our cases directed explicitly at policy change for eco-innovation. For policy makers, our results suggest a complementary use of different types of intermediaries to support eco-innovation.

In this paper, we describe and discuss how in two CDIO-based entrepreneurship courses at Linköping University, Sweden, we encourage students to identify and solve challenges and problems in two adjacent industrial sectors, i.e., environmental technology and agricultural/green industries. Both courses are offered to a broad range of engineering programs. The industrial sectors chosen give the students a delimited context incorporating direction, business culture and technology, that forms a basis for the students on which to build their entrepreneurship cases. Working with real challenges gives real-life experience of how models and frameworks can be utilized and correctly executed. In addition, it increases project relevance, student motivation and learning.

One challenge to overcome is the fact that many students lack previous work-life experience and a thorough knowledge of the industrial sectors in focus. Experiences from earlier courses told us that this made it difficult for students identify and develop realistic, yet challenging and new business ideas on their own to. To remedy this, we tested facilitating interaction with industry, and through this help the students to detect real problems. Furthermore, it was anticipated that interaction with external actors, such as established businesses, organizations and potential customers, helps students to adjust and fine-tune needs and demands to create business ideas that could have real potential. As an added benefit, this approach could enable academia to act as co-creator in industrial problem solving, i.e., to put academic knowledge to practical use in society. Based on our own experiences and student feedback we discuss how this approach forced the students out of their comfort zones, challenged their creativity and enhanced their learning.

This article analyzes how publicly-owned utility companies can remain competitive in liberalized markets. We study EPM, a utility company from Medellin, Colombia. We discuss the companys management model, local laws and regulations affecting it, direct and indirect benefits for the city, and risks resulting from the power it has acquired. It is claimed that early decisions to maintain public ownership of key assets and provide the company with administrative autonomy helped it remain competitive, despite the liberalization of the market. This has allowed the city to increase its revenue and, as a result, its spending on social and environmental projects. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This article studies five Swedish cities, their membership in international city networks, the different motivations for such membership, and their administrations’ expected and perceived benefits. Particular focus is put on sustainability, environmental technology, and municipal companies as potential beneficiaries of such network membership. This study is motivated by the fact that city networks can potentially contribute to global sustainability goals by accelerating the diffusion of innovations, giving members access to bidirectional information flows, improving the user-producer relationship, and providing legitimacy in the potential recipient regimes.

The study relies on a documentation review, the collection of data from the websites of the studied cities and numerous international city networks, and interviews with city officials responsible for international city networks. It was found that four of the five studied cities are active members of international networks for sustainability, but also that there are large gaps between the two largest cities and the rest when it comes to the number of memberships and the geographical outreach they have through the networks they belong to.

Some city officials claim that it is easier to be active in national networks than in international networks, due to time requirements and coordination among so many members. However, city officials see benefits for their municipal companies when they are members of international networks, and these companies are usually independent when it comes to choosing and administering their memberships. It was found that it is difficult to measure direct benefits from network membership, and link improvements in the studied cities to participation in a particular network (with the exception of groups created for a specific infrastructure project, reported as “networks” by the administrations). In addition, there is no apparent direct correlation between membership and diffusion of environmental solutions from municipal companies. However, the administrations expect indirect benefits such as gaining legitimacy and access to milieus where they can share information and best practices, which could lead to the improvement of both local and global environmental conditions.

Strategies for sustainable development are arguably part of the most discussed issues among political and corporate actors. These discussions are spurred by global challenges such as climate change, urbanization, and critical natural resource depletion. Sustainable development will require deep structural and wide-reaching changes in current institutions, technologies, and businesses. Furthermore, new approaches are needed to facilitate the development, diffusion, and implementation of environmental technologies. In the academic discourse different concepts, e.g., ecodesign and Product/Service System design, have been proposed within the framework of sustainable development. To deliver even more system-wide environmental improvements, these concepts have been challenged to be expanded in focus beyond products and services to include large technical systems encompassing non-technological dimensions. Motivated by these, the goal of this article is twofold. First, to offer an expanded view on ecodesign of product/service systems using a perspective of large technical systems. Second, to propose and discuss important components to consider when developing business concepts for the diffusion of large scaled environmental technology systems such as district heating supply, waste management, and renewable energy systems. Using qualitative semi-structured interviews and company documentation analysis, this study examines five companies that develop and diffuse large scaled environmental technology systems. As a result of these case studies, we propose components of business concepts that incorporate both technological and non-technological dimensions. Our proposed business concept components are: market (including regulation), finance, resources, activities, partnership (especially public-private partnership), ownership and responsibility, and legitimacy. Regulation, public-private partnership, and legitimacy are particularly important in the diffusion of large scaled environmental technology systems.

Export represents a means for the diffusion of environmental technologies with potential socio-economic and environmental benefits. However, environmental technology providers experience export barriers which stifle export and thus several governments continue to formulate export promotion initiatives towards this sector. Although export promotion is identified as essential in the environmental technology policy literature, it is yet to receive attention as to which initiatives are available in different countries including their potential relevance for environmental sustainability. Such knowledge is fundamental for policy learning and transfer including identification of good practices.

To address this knowledge gap, we use market failure and comparative public policy theories to analyse export promotion initiatives from export promotion and export credit agencies across eight countries in Asia, Europe, and North America. Three major conclusions emerge: (1) governmental initiatives to promote environmental technology export can be categorised under financial aid, information provision, education and training, and trade mobility programs; (2) policy choices regarding promotion initiatives are mediated by the institutional context and interests of policy actors (3) relevant aspects of such initiatives for environmental sustainability include the incorporation of particular environmental technology characteristics in initiative formulation, and the prioritisation between different technology and markets types for implementation.

This article draws from two bodies of literature, innovation intermediaries and technological innovation systems, to develop an approach for analysing the functions of intermediaries in eco-innovation. The link between the functions of innovation intermediaries and the functions of technological innovation systems has seldom been explicitly established in the scientific discourse and thus this article contributes to theoretical development in both literatures. To the technological innovation systems literature, this article addresses the lack of attention to the functions of innovation intermediaries who are a critical part in the formation of networks and also contribute to a number of innovation system functions. To the innovation intermediary literature, the functional approach advocates for a synthesis and consensus building in the literature regarding intermediary functions in view of the several redundancies and ambiguities on the subject matter. Empirical operationalization of the analytical approach including methodological choices from case studies in Region Scania, Sweden and North Rhine Westphalia, Germany are also discussed. The results of our analysis show that the functions of the innovation intermediaries are particularly relevant for the overall goals of an innovation system as compared to the configuration of intermediary actors. Particular challenges with a functional approach in this context include the difficulties of establishing a causal relation between the support functions of intermediaries and eco-innovation outcomes in firms.

This article combines the theoretical field of Industrial Symbiosis (IS) with a business model perspective to increase the knowledge about drivers and barriers behind the emergence of excess heat supply collaborations between district heating companies and industrial firms. The increased knowledge is gained by identifying and examining drivers and barriers associated with collaborative efforts to funnel excess heat produced by industrial firms into district heating grids in Sweden. An increased recovery of excess heat has the potential to reduce the primary energy demands of district heating systems. This study examines both existing and potential developments of industrial collaborations of excess heat-based district heating systems. The focus of the study consists of two Swedish cases of existing collaboration between district heating companies and pulp and paper industries as well as 16 industrial firms that all produce unused excess heat as a by-product. Confirming earlier research results, this study shows that financial issues are both the main drivers and the main barriers behind the emergence and development of inter-organisational collaborations. In addition, this study confirms earlier research that found the trust, joint problem solving, and fine-grained information transfer are important elements of successful collaboration. This study complements and clarifies these three features by including honesty and shared visions on common goals as important qualities needed for well-functioning collaborations. Combining the IS and the business model perspective has made it possible to examine more factors related to collaboration. The business model perspective has contributed with knowledge about central components of the business agreement between the collaborating parties, and the IS-perspective has contributed knowledge of the important organisational factors behind the emergence and development of long-term sustainable business agreements between firms.