Services in the forest-based bioeconomy – analysis of European strategies

Abstract

Services in the forest-based bioeconomy-analysis of European strategies The increasing role of services for business making has been recognised in the forest-based sector, yet a systematic analysis of this emerging phenomenon is lacking. The current study derives from service research three perspectives for analysis: services activities separate from primary production and manufacturing-processing, services outputs separate from tangible products, and service as strategic, i.e., business model consideration how value is created. Document analyses have been carried out to examine how these perspectives are identifiable in the European-level bioeconomy and forest-based sector strategies, as well as in a number of major strategic partnerships beyond the bio-based industries, i.e., the research and innovation programmes of processing industries, manufacturing, energy-efficient buildings and green vehicles. The upstream and downstream strategies tend to differ on their approach to services. This paper contributes to the forest sector research by introducing two distinct perspectives from the service research literature to address the increasing role of services in the context of evolving bioeconomy: 1) explicating the role of services in the bioeconomy supply chains in order to improve efficiency and existing processes, and 2) elaborating service as a means to better understand the changing business models and modes of value creation which may lead to system-level changes.

Renewing the sawmill industry: studies on innovation, customer value and digitalization

“…Previous research suggests that market or customer orientation prevails within the industry (Cohen et al, 2001;Hansen et al, 2005. However, many scholars have pointed out that the forest industry is still strongly production-oriented (e.g., Brege et al, 2010;Stendahl et al, 2013;Han & Hansen, 2017;Pelli et al, 2017). This thesis supports the latter view.…”

Circular Business Models for the Bio-Economy: A Review and New Directions for Future Research

“…Numerous value proposition activities are described in the literature, mainly when connected to the refining of existing or potential offers related to the bio-economy. This refinement includes offers connected to bio-energy [5,9,22], bio-fuels [6,23,24], bio-plastics [2,[24][25][26], chemicals [22,24,25,27], pharmaceuticals [5], nanocellulose [25,27], and tourism and services [28]. Much of this discussion is related to the concept of bio-refinery, which is frequently studied and should lead to changing value logics [5,25,[29][30][31][32][33].…”

“…Considering the economic value generated through a shift to a bio-economy can create new income streams; for example, for pulp and paper companies, a high potential exists to move away from stagnating markets with new business models [27,30,32]. In addition, many articles highlight the environmental value through which the bio-economy can support sustainability [1,6,26,28,34]. Thus, companies should ensure the realization of environmental gains through their business model's design.…”

“…Many studies also address the high potential for generating social value that is created through a bio-economy. They frequently mention local employment [6,[22][23][24], rural regeneration [4,24,28,34], recreation [9], and energy security [22,23,34]. Overall, the activities of the focal company need to focus on generating more value from a given volume to ensure economic, environmental, and social value [5,22].…”

“…Furthermore, moving to a bio-economy requires also working on an internal transformation [32], which deals with changing the culture in many traditional forest-based companies [25]. Another key activity that is crucial for success is working continuously with innovating and evaluating the business model [21,28]. In sum, the literature focuses mainly on the activities relevant to the focal company's successful transition to a bio-economy, not its operational activities.…”