Beyond papermaking: technology and market shifts for wood-based biomass industries - management implications for large-scale industries

Growing environmental concerns, emerging economies, and the strong uncertainties about future prices of fossil fuels as well as about CO2 emissions contribute to a potential renaissance for biorefining industries. According to theories on technology shifts and innovations (e. g. [Utterback, J. M. 1994. Mastering the dynamics of innovation. How companies can seize opportunities under technological change. Harvard Business School Press]), heavy process industries like pulp and paper tend to be rigid towards disruptive innovations and instead focus on incremental innovations and economies of scale. However, a major empirical contribution from this case study demonstrates that some incumbents may escape the lock-in and form a new biomass development block. The study also contributes to academic as well as technology and innovation management perspectives in process-based and natural resource-based industries, where process innovations are tightly coupled with product innovations in inter-industry (vertical) linkages, the so-called development block.