Firm-level competitiveness in the forest industries: review and research implications in the context of bioeconomy strategies

Abstract

The operational environment of the forest sector is becoming more complex, and maintaining competitiveness has become increasingly complicated. At the industry or firm level, competitiveness is seen as the ability to perform better than competitors in terms of value creation over time. Relatively little is known about changes in firm-level competitiveness caused by the shifting dynamics of the competitive situation in the forest sector toward the bioeconomy. A systematic literature review is conducted to examine how competitiveness of the sector is analyzed at the firm level and what are seen as its most influential drivers. Furthermore, these findings are discussed in the context of the bioeconomy transition. The results show that strategies and firm characteristics related to innovation and differentiation provide the key for understanding competitiveness at the firm level. Literature focuses on describing the competitive dynamics between firms within an industry rather than across sectors, despite that substitution between materials as well as intersectoral R&D collaboration are strongly advocated by national and international bioeconomy strategies.

“Being one of the boys”: perspectives from female forest industry leaders on gender diversity and the future of Nordic forest-based bioeconomy

“…According to Korhonen et al (2018), the realization of bioeconomy ambitions hinges to a great extent on the competitiveness of bio-based firms and industries, and their ability to combine a more diverse knowledge base. The bioeconomy is thus supposed to contribute to and benefit from the development of regional, multi-actor clusters of competences, knowledge, and technologies (Bugge et al 2016).…”

Perceptions on the Importance of Forest Sector Innovations: Biofuels, Biomaterials, or Niche Products?

“…Based on a recent literature review [28], forest industry competitiveness is increasingly connected with various types of factors related to innovation and differentiation strategies at the firm-level.…”

Diversification of the forest industries: role of new wood-based products

“…Research in the field of new wood-based products has mostly addressed the question of what can be made of lignocellulosic biomass, while questions of which (intermediate) products will be produced, how much, where, for what reasons, and with what (environmental) consequences have gained less attention (Hetemäki and Hurmekoski 2016;Korhonen et al 2018). Previous assessments of the hypothetical market potential of new wood-based products are focused on bio-based substitutes for fossil oil derivatives (Schipfer et al 2017), biorefining (Näyhä and Pesonen 2014), biobased chemicals, polymers, and fibers , construction products (Hildebrandt et al 2017), and highly diverse novel wood-based products and production technologies based on, e.g., nanocellulose and lignin (Cai et al 2013;Shatkin et al 2014).…”