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    Understanding Business Environments and Success Factors for Emerging Bioeconomy Enterprises through a Comprehensive Analytical Framework
    (Basel : MDPI, 2020) Adamseged, Muluken Elias; Grundmann, Philipp
    The development toward the bioeconomy requires, among others, generating and institutionalizing knowledge that contributes to technical and nontechnical inventions and innovations. Efforts to support innovation are often linked with the development of business models that facilitate the development in bioeconomy. However, the interdependences between the business models and their business environments are not sufficiently well understood in a way where misalignments that can obstruct the development can be dealt with adequately. Given this lacuna, this research aims to contribute to the development of a comprehensive analytical framework for better understanding the conditions of business environment as well as empirically apply the framework in an empirical study on cases of bioeconomy enterprises in Europe. In this paper, a comprehensive business environment framework is developed and applied for analyzing over 80 cases, thereby allowing for critical action arenas and crucial success factors to be identified. The findings are derived from a systematic application of the framework to relevant action arenas for business development: institutional development, technology and knowledge, consumers’ agency, market structure, funding, resource and infrastructure, and training and education. The results show that businesses in the bioeconomy, unlike other businesses, have to deal with more and very specific constraining legislative issues, infant and non-adapted technology and knowledge, as well as unclear values and perceptions of consumers. Due to this, businesses have to develop new forms of cooperation with different stakeholders. Successful businesses are characterized by the fact that they develop specific strategies, steering structures, and processes with a particular focus on learning and innovation to overcome misalignments between the business environment and their business models. Focusing efforts on learning and innovation in institutional development, technology and knowledge, consumers’ agency, and funding are especially promising as these turned out to be particularly critical and in particular need of institutional alignment for reducing different kinds of transaction costs in the development of bioeconomy.
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    Supportive Business Environments to Develop Grass Bioeconomy in Europe
    (Basel : MDPI, 2021) Orozco, Richard; Mosquera-Losada, María Rosa; Rodriguez, Javier; Adamseged, Muluken Elias; Grundmann, Philipp
    Grasslands cover almost half of the total European agricultural area and are the source of a wide range of public goods and services. Yet, their potential to produce innovative bio-based products, such as paper and plastic, remains widely untapped. We employ a multiple case study approach and implement the Business Environment Framework by Adamseged and Grundmann (2020) on eighteen alternative grass-based businesses to investigate the interdependencies between these successful business models and their business environments. The subsequent analysis reveals that the deployment of funds and policies to support alternative grass-based products remains low in most regions of Europe. Our findings highlight that aligned funding mechanisms that incorporate and promote the specific benefits generated by grass-producing and grass-processing businesses are key to overcoming the barriers related to the competition of bio-based products with the established fossil-fuels-based economic system. To make alternative grass-based markets more dynamic, increasing consumer awareness through adequate marketing is perceived as an important aspect. Capacity building and alignment efforts need to be strengthened and coordinated at local and higher levels to enable the replication and scale-up of novel grass-based businesses in Europe and beyond.