Discontinuous innovation in traditional industries – a model for innovation in the context of Nordic sustainable industry transitions

Thesis

The climate crisis and the global effort to mitigate its effects require simultaneous innovation across energy systems, industry supply chains, and business models. This implies a particularly steep step-change for traditional industry sectors that rely on fossil fuels and heavily emitting processes, i.e. hard-to-abate industry sectors like steelmaking, mining, concrete, and petrochemicals. However, most existing innovation models for breakthrough transformations focus on user-driven market disruption rather than innovation settings where supply chains and physical infrastructure are at the centre, while the literature on sustainability transitions lacks a specific focus on innovation. As a result, there is no existing theoretical framework for comparative analysis of innovation processes, which could situate and guide the transition to sustainability in traditional industry settings.

This thesis argues that such analysis can be undertaken if hard-to-abate sustainability transitions are understood and theorised as instances of discontinuous innovation. The thesis proposes a new framework for categorising different modes for the strategic positioning of discontinuous innovation ventures and for analysing the roles and relationships of stakeholders shaping discontinuous innovation processes. The new framework is developed inductively from interlinked empirical case studies into pioneers in carbon-free steelmaking and hydrogen innovation in the Nordic region. The primary contribution of the thesis to the literature on innovation is to introduce a new theory perspective for analysing sustainability transitions – as processes of discontinuous innovation in traditional industries.

The thesis subsequently outlines how this new perspective helps clarify how innovation for sustainable industry transitions may be organised and shaped differently in different contexts. In the Nordic case context, this analysis suggests that successful discontinuous innovation surrounding sustainable industry transitions is driven not by any singular stakeholder or market disruption, but by system-level coordination between different ventures, by risk-sharing within the regional innovation system, and by the enabling impact of national innovation policies.

Authors: Salenius, VM

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-r1jpzjp6d
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: decarbonisation; innovation strategy; sustainability transitions; green steel; discontinuous innovation; traditional industries; hydrogen; innovation systems; Nordic industry
• Subjects: Sustainability; Technological innovations; Strategy; Disruptive technologies; Diffusion of innovations