Coping with coopetition—Facing dilemmas in cooperation for sustainable development: The case of the Dutch smart grid industry

Abstract

This paper is amongst the first to examine coopetition strategy for sustainable development at the network level. Companies who want to successfully implement complex innovative technologies that support sustainable development need to collaborate with other actors of the innovation ecosystem, including their competitors, so that they can develop standards, interoperable products, pool knowledge, and resources and bundle forces to compete against other technologies. Collaboration with competitors brings benefits, but also many risks. We investigated how firms cope with these risks when establishing an innovation ecosystem to implement a new technology in society. We conducted research in the Dutch smart grids sector and explored how these firms minimize inherent risks of coopetition. We found that system-building actors in the Dutch smart grid field not only minimize inherent risks, but from the start of their collaboration they implement so-called enablers to prevent these risks upfront.

Driving the electric bandwagon: The dynamics of incumbents' sustainable innovation

“…"Systemic sustainable product innovation" cannot be pursued autonomously by a single firm; it is co-dependent on innovation outside a focal organization. The development and commercialization of systemic innovation need to be coordinated, for instance via an ecosystem strategy (Jacobides, Cennamo, & Gawer, 2018) or system-building networks (Planko et al, 2019;Planko, Cramer, Chappin, & Hekkert, 2016) and often also depend on changes at a broader societal level, such as consumer behaviour or regulation. Examples include products and services related to energy and mobility, which require changes in infrastructure, rules, and norms.…”

“…Besides, they do not only engage in sustainability innovation to achieve a license to operate in society and/or an industry, but also for more instrumental reasons (Aguilera, Rupp, Williams, & Ganapathi, 2007;Arnold & Hockerts, 2011). They compete with one another based on their sustainability innovation (McWilliams & Siegel, 2001) and thus also have disincentives to act collectively and move concomitantly towards a shared industry standard for sustainable product innovation (e.g., Hahn & Pinkse, 2014;Planko et al, 2019).…”

“…Autonomous innovation and systemic innovation, however, are fundamentally different. Whereas autonomous innovation lies at the discretion of a focal company, the success of systemic innovation requires the industry as a whole to engage in a transition, otherwise chances for success of the individual company are limited (e.g., Planko, Chappin, Cramer, & Hekkert, ). Dominant theoretical explanations for firm behaviour regarding disruptive, autonomous innovation might therefore not hold for systemic innovation (e.g., Geels, ).…”

Coopetition for sustainability: Between organizational benefit and societal good

“…Christ et al () explore for example a coopetitive agreement in the Australian wine industry that reduced usage of fossil fuels and refrigeration by jointly outsourcing bottling and packaging. In another example, Planko et al () identify main enablers of coopetition in the Dutch smart grids sector when competitors collaborate in developing innovative technologies that support sustainable development.…”

“…Those studies that take an explicit interest in coopetition for sustainability do discuss different types of outcomes on a general level (Bowen, Bansal, & Slawinski, 2018;Christ et al, 2017;Limoubpratum et al, 2015;Meehan & Bryde, 2015;Peloza & Falkenberg, 2009;Planko, Chappin, Cramer, & Hekkert, 2019;Stadtler, 2017;Volschenk et al, 2016). Still, there is a lack of a systematic unpacking of what these possible outcomes of coopetition for sustainability may actually be.…”