Diversification strategies and the emergence of a new industrial value-chain: challenges and opportunities for companies

Cristina de Sousa, Margarida Fontes, Oscarina Conceição

Proceedings of the 18th European Conference on Innovation and Entrepreneurship | Vol. 2

Marine renewable energy technologies (MRET) can contribute to the decarbonization of energy, as well as to the revitalisation of other sectors, but are still an emerging and uncertain area. The development of these technologies entails the construction of a new industrial value chain, requiring the involvement of established firms from a variety of industries. Thus, it is important to understand how established firms can be mobilised to support MRET development, by pursuing diversification strategies. This paper addresses this question by looking at the case of Portuguese firms that expressed willingness to engage with MRET and investigating how they perceive the opportunities for diversification into the new business area, the changes they may need to introduce in their resources and capabilities to exploit those opportunities, and the obstacles they expect to face.

Link for Paper

Winds of change: the potential path disturbing effect induced by the offshore wind technology

Margarida Fontes, Hélder Santos, Teresa Sá-Marques

7th Geography of Innovation Conference | GeoInno 2024

The paper addresses the “disturbing” effects that new generations of technology can introduce in the early trajectory of a regional industrial path built around that technology, focusing on the dimensions along which such disturbance occurs and the actors’ responses to them.

On the crest of a wave: The variety of place configurations around an emerging energy technology in Europe (1992-2019)

Margarida Fontes, Hélder Santos, Teresa Sá Marques

Finisterra

The study investigates the variety in place configurations around a sustainable technology, in its early phase of development. Adopting a systemic and multi-scalar approach to technology development, this article proposes that the spatially distributed nature of technology emergence leads to the formation of different place configurations of actors and networks around the technology, which can contribute in different ways to its development. Using the case of wave energy technology and a methodology that permits to encompass and compare emergent processes unfolding across Europe, the research uncovers five place profiles, which denote different positions in the emerging system and thus need to be jointly considered to fully understand the process of new system development. The article adds to knowledge on the multi-place and multi-scale systemic processes that are at work in the early phases of technology development, contributing to a better understanding of global system construction around a new sustainable technology.

Keywords: Place configurations; sustainable technology early phase; multi-scalar interactions; global system construction; wave energy technology.

Link to Paper