Fostering sustainable entrepreneurship by business strategies: An explorative approach in the bioeconomy

Abstract

The conceptual framework of bioeconomy advances sustainability by ensuring that environmental, social, and economic goals are met. Although numerous authors perceive bioeconomy as a key sector to achieve sustainable transformation, there is a lack of a comprehensive set of factors determining sustainable entrepreneurship in the bioeconomy sector. This study aims to identify factors influencing business strategies for sustainable entrepreneurship in the bioeconomy sector. This study uses the triangulation of research methods, including the entrepreneurial discovery process, as well as multiple-criteria methods of the pairwise comparison and the analytic hierarchy process. This study serves as grounds for the identification of priority factors influencing the choice of relevant business strategies in the bioeconomy. Within the framework of the research, five core factors are specified: economic-and-financial, market, technological, ecological, organization-and-human resources, and legal. The findings reveal that the most significant factors are economic-and-financial and market factors that determine the choice of innovative and offensive strategies by bioeconomy enterprises. These strategies impact entrepreneurial decision-making processes in the environmental and social areas, and they contribute to the development of more sustainable and entrepreneurial ecosystems. To advance the research on sustainable entrepreneurship, different theoretical perspectives are combined, including economics, strategic management, and innovation perspective.

The linkage between Agile project management and sustainable development: A theoretical and empirical view

“…From Ciccullo et al (2018) point of view, the current unfavorable economic conditions in the world have highlighted the need to develop organizations that can integrate various micro and macroeconomic factors in order to effectively meet customer needs. At the same time, these organizations should respect the environmental and social requirements of a broader set stakeholders in every step of functioning, from creating innovation (Urbaniec et al, 2021) to supply chain (Digalwar et al, 2020). Ciccullo et al also claim that development value for stakeholders can be reached for example by the improvement of environmental conditions.…”

The bioeconomy transformation as an external enabler of sustainable entrepreneurship

“…Previous studies have argued that SE drivers (Argade et al, 2021; Jensen et al, 2020; Jolink & Niesten, 2015; Niemann et al, 2020; Schaltegger & Wagner, 2011) as well as sustainable business models (Bocken et al, 2014) can be context‐specific. Moreover, bioeconomy‐specific factors influence sustainable entrepreneurs' business‐strategy choices (Urbaniec et al, 2022). The same applies to entrepreneurial skills and competencies: As prior research on entrepreneurship education has shown, they can be context‐specific (Thomassen et al, 2020).…”

“…Scholars have made initial attempts to describe the bioeconomy's specific opportunity space (Kuckertz et al, 2019) and the relevant business models (D'Amato et al, 2020) and business strategies (Fotiadis & Polemis, 2018;Urbaniec et al, 2022). However, conceptualizations of entrepreneurship in the bioeconomy have remained rather simplistic, and little is known about the processes of opportunity identification, evaluation, and exploitation (Kuckertz et al, 2020).…”

Bioeconomic Entrepreneurship and Key Factors of Development: Lessons from Argentina

“…The bioeconomy emerges as a new set of activities based on the use of biological resources. It mainly rests on three pillars: the intensive and diverse use of products of biological origin (biomass); the intensive use of innovative knowledge; and the development of a wide range of new products derived from these biological resources [17]. The Economic Commission for Latin America, CEPAL [18] defines the bioeconomy to be: (a) an economy based on the consumption and production of goods and services derived from the direct use and sustainable transformation of biological resources and the biogenic waste generated in the transformation, production and consumption processes; (b) taking advantage of the knowledge of biological processes and principles; and (c) the technologies applicable to the knowledge and transformation of biological resources and the emulation of biological processes and principles.…”

“…Nearly all (16 of the 18) respondents categorized themselves into the same pathway we had put them, i.e., they stated that they contribute (a lot) to the given pathway. However, nearly all (17) enterprises also stated that they contribute to at least two other pathways. Therefore, we continued with the original grouping following the examples given in Biber-Freudenberger et al [30] and Stark et al [23].…”