This paper addresses international activities of young companies in the emerging marine energy industry. We build our study on interviews in eight companies combined with scientific reports and publications. The main challenges for the companies are related to financing and technology development. Our findings show that the companies may be divided in three groups: a) three technology and funding driven international ventures, b) one market driven international venture and c) four companies with limited international involvement. The short timespan between establishment and first major international activity for acquiring funding or technology competence is a distinct characteristic of the firms in the first two groups. The last group with no or limited international activity reveals an alternative development path. Our study gives insight in significant firm level differences with regard to international involvement in the pre-commercial phase of development and discusses the implications for researchers, managers and public policy.
This study investigates the relationships between emission reduction, long-term orientation, green strategy, and green innovation among maritime vessel-owning firms of various sizes in the Norwegian maritime sector. A change from the utilization of fossil fuels and move toward more sustainable sources of energy demand substantial financial investments and behavioral changes but are fundamental to preventing further climate change. This study examines the greening of the Norwegian fleet through a structural equation model based upon 246 survey responses. Although our model does not show a significant direct relationship between long-term orientation and emission reductions, we do find that long-term orientation is indirectly related to emission reductions because of its relationships with green strategy and green innovation. Moreover, as mediators, green innovation and green strategy share direct associations with firms' reductions of greenhouse gases and environmentally harmful emissions. Implications for practitioners and policy makers are proposed.
In this article, we focus on how investors add value, in addition to finances, to resource-constrained young technology companies in a pre-commercial and capital-intensive industry. Based on a review of the entrepreneurial finance literature, we group investors' value-added contributions into four categories: 'Business development', 'Technology development', 'Investor's outreach' and 'Legitimacy'.We build our study on six case studies of firms in the pre-commercial and emerging marine energy industry. Our case companies have received investments from business angels (BAs), venture capitalists (VCs) and larger corporations (CVCs). We observed that the contributions from the investors clearly differ and that CVC investors appear to be especially important as their involvement help increase young technology firms' credibility, which could be a crucial factor in pre-commercial and emerging industries. Overall, by engaging 'smart capital', a company can move from a situation of true uncertainty to one of manageable risk.
This chapter investigates key motivations, drivers, and barriers for firms that are seeking to enter new international supply chains for renewable energy. Offshore wind (OW) is a born global industry with a fully internationalized supply chain from inception. The study adopts a mixed-methods approach by first doing 11 case studies of Norwegian industrial companies entering OW and secondly by conducting an online survey targeting the whole population of Norwegian firms in OW. The study finds that new green industries' distinctive features, managerial motivation, and industry relatedness shape a firm's entry strategies and behavior. Risk and uncertainty, complexity and turbulence, high transaction costs and disadvantages of scale postpone industry entry from established actors. The study finds that environmental motivation tops the list of motivations for managers to enter, but financial motivation is the strongest of perceived market performance. Finally, the study finds that market relatedness is more critical than technological relatedness.
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