Analyzing the Relative Influence of Supply Side, Demand Side and Regulatory Factors on the Success of Collaborative Energy Innovation Projects

Abstract

The analysis of the importance of supply side and demand side factors with regard to innovative behavior is quite old. In this paper, these two categories are used to distinguish and examine the relevance of several success factors for collaborative innovation projects on the firm level in the German energy sector. The literature emphasizes that solving environmental problems requires extensive technological change. On the other hand, due to higher prices the market push is weaker. Regulatory factors are therefore designed to stimulate environmental innovations. The relative influence of these three categories on project performance is investigated on the basis of a sample of 128 German collaborative energy innovation projects in the development phase using a scale-based approach and structural equation modeling at the firm level. The results confirm the importance of supply side factors followed by demand side factors. In contrast to literary assumptions, R&D subsidies played no significant role.

The Effects of Locational Factors on the Performance of Innovation Networks in the German Energy Sector

“…Literature has emphasized innovation policy as a driver of technological change [76]. In addition to technology push and demand pull factors to explain innovation activities [77], governmental policy is considered to be necessary for renewable energy innovation projects [78]. Renewable energy technologies suffer from uncertain financial returns for the R&D investment and the perception of not being competitive with conventional energy technologies in terms of costs [78,79].…”

“…The projects were expected to have an explicit commercialization agenda. Different sources were used as starting points, in particular websites of different German Federal and Federal state ministries providing information on funding programmes, websites of German research institutes (e.g., Fraunhofer, Helmholtz) containing project lists, websites of the German Renewable Energy Research Association (FVEE-ForschungsVerbund Erneuerbare Energien), industry associations (German Solar Association and the European counterpart), or energy agencies (Agentur für erneuerbare Energien) [77]. In addition, a database that had been used in two previous studies [85,86] was searched for suitable innovation projects.…”

“…The data was tested for non-response bias taking the sample population of all collaborative energy innovation projects into account, and response bias, e.g., comparing respondents providing a written or online survey, with regard to several characteristics [88]. Only few significant differences at the 0.10 level were found with regard to the distribution of the energy conversion sources in the sample and the sample population [77].…”

“…The design of the questionnaire relied on the literature and suggestions by experts [77,89]. We measured how network managers judged locational factors and the collaborative performance using a seven-point Likert scale from 1 = 'strongly disagree' to 7 = 'strongly agree'.…”

Empirical Study on Dynamic Factors of Information Industry Collaborative Innovation

“…Xue-chao Wu(2014) puts forward that the level government supports, the government and university's relevant policies as well as the intellectual property, enterprise-scale and government supports on research and development, financial supports, tax privileges are major constraining factors for both enterprise and university [6]. Alexandra Rese(2016) divides the dynamic factors on the success of collaborative energy innovation projects into three categories, namely supply side, demand side and regulatory factors [7].…”