Over the past few decades, many food niches have emerged with a specific focus on quality. In specialty coffee, micro roasters have brought about Direct Trade coffee as a way of organising an alternative around new tastes and qualities through ongoing and 'direct' relations to farmers and cooperatives. But Direct Trade also involves exporters. We ask, how do exporters and roasters work together in these new coffee relations, and what do they work on? We observe and participate in a situation where Colombian coffee exporters visit Danish roasters. They tour the roasting facilities and taste a number of coffees. Often, the term power is used to analyse such value chain interactions, but we argue that the term coordination better opens up these interactions for exploration and analysis. What emerges is a coordination of quality. Through touring and tasting, issues emerge and differences are laid out. We learn that quality is a continuous achievement. There is friction between the ways in which the roasters and exporters do quality, but these are not done away with through power. They are made known and discussable through the work of coordination. The activity of tasting quality is a coordination device that allows for bringing out differences in how quality is done in practice. Coffee, in this event, is not a fixed object, but shifts as issues of quality are brought up in tasting. This suggests a decentering of the object on the issue of quality.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Intermediaries are actors who perform several functions during innovation processes such as brokering and networking. In this article, the aim is to analyse how intermediaries support collaborative innovation processes taking place in green maritime technology projects. In particular, retrofit projects related to cleaner technologies and small vessels are an understudied subject. The case study of a Danish small island ferry retrofit shows that intermediaries are important to stage the collaboration between actors. They can provide functions to the incipient network as foresight, brokering, increasing network connectivity, and scanning of information. However, intermediaries can also have a proactive role in shaping the emerging innovation pathways. In this case study, intermediaries negotiate each partner's role and define the goals of the project. The results contribute to the broader eco-innovation literature by analysing intermediation in innovation in a process perspective.
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