Many higher education institutions (HEIs) in peripheral regions are surrounded by rural areas where small independent businesses form the core of local industry. Rural entrepreneurs often have little experience from contacts with HEIs, and vice versa, although the potential benefits of such linkages could be considerable. In this chapter we reflect on how HEIs’ engagement with rural entrepreneurs can be developed and organised and what impact such engagement might have on regional green transitions, based on our own experiences from entrepreneurship training at a peripheral university in south-eastern Sweden. The chapter contributes with insights on how small-scale rural entrepreneurship can be supported, ultimately leading to more resilient and flourishing rural areas.

The concept of “green transition” has gained significant traction in recent years, particularly since 2020. However, the underlying focus on the need to address climate change can be dated back to international agreements made in the 1990s such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (United Nations, 1992) and the Kyoto Protocol (United Nations, 1997). In these early agreements, the main focus was on the development and diffusion of cleaner and more energy efficient technologies as well as setting quantitative targets for emissions reductions. The Kyoto Protocol also emphasised the need for reducing market imperfections and counterproductive incentive structures.

Higher education institutions (HEIs) play a pivotal yet underexplored role in Regional Green Transitions (RGTs) and sustainable development. This volume addresses this knowledge gap by examining how universities in the Nordic region engage with RGTs, offering theoretical and methodological insights from diverse disciplines such as economic geography, political economy, organisational theory and education. The Nordic region, often regarded as a benchmark for best practices in education, research, innovation and regional development, serves as the backdrop for this exploration.

Through a rich collection of case studies, the book reveals that RGTs are neither linear nor uniform. Universities navigate these transitions at varying speeds and with different strategies. Some act as agenda-setters, leveraging local coalitions and innovation ecosystems, while others adopt a more cautious approach, observing leading regions and universities before committing to action. Structural pressures, such as national funding systems, global supply chains and sectoral dependencies, further shape their responses.

Offering important conceptual and practical insights for a wide variety of audiences, from social scientists and advance students to university managers, and policymakers, this volume underscores the critical role of HEIs in advancing RGTs (and change processes more generally) amidst evolving political, economic and social landscapes.

As the HEREGREEN project drew to a close in 2025, it did so at a moment when the policy environment that framed much of the project’s early work has shifted in ways few of us anticipated. The project unfolded through workshops held in Kristiansand (June 2023), Tampere (April 2024) and Linköping (March 2025). At the workshops in Kristiansand and Tampere, the sense of directional momentum in favour of green transitions—even if gradual, contested or uneven—seemed broadly stable. The political centre appeared to be holding: in the Nordics, in Brussels, and across much of Europe.

This introductory chapter by the editors provides the backdrop for the three-year research project that has led to the content being presented throughout the volume. At the onset, the research team have identified three understudied key themes and their related challenges and opportunities. The identified themes, discussed in same detail here, included (i) exploring tensions and synergies between regionalisation and internationalisation; (ii) harnessing complexity and fostering place-based leadership, and (iii) positioning the social sciences in a STEM-dominated landscape. These themes have served as guideposts for the project workshops and its key deliverables, even if the final chapters presented here may be centred on other aspects related to the broader topic of higher education institutions’ roles in regional green transitions. The chapter concludes with an overview of the individual case contributions that are at the heart of this edited volume.

This study investigates the complex processes of growth and evolution exhibited by circular new ventures. A dataset followed the development trajectories of 70 such ventures from 2021 to 2024. One notable observation is that these new ventures often adopt an experimental approach when crafting their circular business models, aiming to effectively address the genuine needs of potential customers while capturing value based on circular principles. Additionally, right from their inception, these ventures demonstrate a proactive interest in integrating themselves into a broader business ecosystem. Nonetheless, the challenges faced by circular new ventures in relation to their liabilities associated with being new to potential customers and markets encompass constraints in resources, limited networks, and the struggle to establish legitimacy, collectively rendering the task of securing strategic partnerships a daunting one. Consequently, counter to the expectations of rapid and extensive expansion, circular new ventures frequently find it necessary to collaborate with and progress gradually alongside other small and nascent ventures.

The novelty of this article lies in its focus on how mature ecosystems align their members around a new value proposition, specifically supporting circular economy entrepreneurship. We use dynamic capabilities theory to analyse the coordination and collaboration challenges in entrepreneurial ecosystems that seek to support entrepreneurship based on circular economy strategies. Drawing on interviews with 34 ecosystem actors and 70 circular new ventures, as well as three focus group discussions, we identify key challenges that hinder the ecosystem's alignment: (i) a lack of shared understanding of the circular economy concept, (ii) diverse business strategies for circular value creation, (iii) insufficient support tools for circular new ventures and (iv) limited interactions between specialists and generalists. Overcoming these challenges requires ecosystem orchestrators with a holistic perspective, strong legitimacy and the ability to mobilize ecosystem-level resources. These orchestrators must foster a shared vision (sensing), promote investment in circular expertise (seizing) and adapt the ecosystem to the evolving needs of circular new ventures (reconfiguring). Using the circular economy context, we contribute to ecosystem theory by highlighting the importance of materiality, the emergence of geographically unbound entrepreneurial ecosystems and the role of non-market exchanges. For practitioners, this article offers actionable insights for reconfiguring mature entrepreneurial ecosystems for new value propositions such as providing support for circular economy entrepreneurs.

This paper aims to enhance the understanding of entrepreneurship training dynamics in ruralsettings through a longitudinal case study of a programme designed for rural idea owners and entrepreneurs.It addresses the challenges of engaging rural entrepreneurs and delivering effective training, particularly asmany entrepreneurial ventures in these regions tend to be hobby or side businesses with limited growthambitions. By employing a case study method that involves observations and interviews with 22 participantswho have completed the programme, the paper underscores the importance of a tailored approach inequipping rural entrepreneurs with the necessary skills and resources to succeed. Empirical findings indicatethat practical workshops, networking opportunities, mentorship, and regional cooperation are vital for thesustainable development of rural businesses, offering significant policy implications for supporting early-stage enterprises in these areas.Keywords: Entrepreneurship training, entrepreneurship support, rural entrepreneurship

This chapter examines how the circular bioeconomy contributes to sustainable management in a different context. We start with a critical analysis of the triple bottom line (TBL) concept, which is one of the key aspects of sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) theories, and embedding the bioeconomy in the context of the Corporate Social Responsibility framework, or rather Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility. According to the logic of the argument, values are the source of the strategy. Hence the next step is a discussion of circularity strategies implemented at the enterprise level, with particular emphasis on the context of bio-based products. Throughout the chapter, the importance of using codes of ethics in the context of declaring the principles of the circular economy is clarified. This topic is followed by a discussion of business models that arise in the context of the transformation towards a sustainable, circular bioeconomy. The last part of the chapter refers to the specific role of projects in the implementation of the bioeconomy and the context of project management in the field of the bioeconomy at the organisational level. It concludes with a discussion of the importance of bioeconomy projects at local and regional level. © 2025 selection and editorial matter, Małgorzata Pink and Agnieszka Józefowska; individual chapters, the contributors.

The challenges encountered by established firms transforming their linear business models into circular business models (CBMs) have received extensive research attention. Such firms have experience and market foothold but tend to adopt an incremental approach to CBMs due to risks of business model cannibalization. However, there is relatively limited research on the challenges experienced by new ventures developing CBMs from scratch – circular new ventures. New ventures are often agile, experimental and deploy disruptive CBMs even though they lack resources. The lack of knowledge specific to this topic is constraining for entities such as incubators and accelerators that seek to facilitate the emergence and scale-up of circular new ventures. Furthermore, researchers cannot presume that the challenges experienced by established firms are the same for new ventures when developing CBMs. Thus, the aim of this article is to explore the challenges that new ventures experience while developing circular business models from scratch, synthesize the sources of these challenges and provide practitioner implications to overcome them. In doing so, we studied 70 circular new ventures across Europe. Our article makes four original contributions to the literature. First, our study is seminal in using a large cross-country dataset to qualitatively analyse the empirical challenges of new ventures developing circular business models. Second, we identify which challenges are generic for CBMs, which challenges are specific for certain CBM types and for circular new ventures in particular. Third, we show that the challenges of circular new ventures are determined by their: (i) type of circular business model, (ii) industrial sector, (iii) institutional context, and (iv) new ventures liabilities. Altogether, we highlight that while circular new ventures and new ventures experience several similar challenges, circular new ventures particularly struggle to scale-up due to their liabilities of newness and smallness which limits their resources and legitimacy to enter strategic partnerships crucial for new venture survival.