Industrial symbiosis (IS) refers to collaborative processes where firms and other actors jointly identify and develop resource management innovations that meet industrial and societal needs more sustainably. By-product valorisation, utility synergies, and knowledge and competence sharing for product and service innovation are key mechanisms of IS. It is commonly accepted that IS creates business value for the involved actors and that such value has a key influence on management decisions to develop and maintain synergistic relations. However, scientific studies on the business value created by operational IS cases is limited both in number and in scope. Majority of relevant studies focus merely on reduction of input purchase and waste management costs and new revenues from the sales of residuals. Although IS, and other relevant, literature highlight a much wider set of business value potentials–albeit in a scattered fashion–these are generally not considered systemically in business value assessments. This is problematic because, without wider considerations, assessments provide only partial knowledge on the business value IS actually creates, and this may result in the concept receiving sub-optimal support both from businesses and policy makers. The purpose of this study is to help bridge this gap by creating improved knowledge of the business value of IS, and thereby stimulate increased support for its advancement. To meet our objectives, we first conducted a thorough literature review–focusing mainly on IS as well as other relevant fields–such as corporate environmental management–and identified a wide spectrum of means by which IS can create business value. We then formed our framework by clustering these into five core groups,, which focused on: inputs; operations; products and markets; learning and innovation, and; stakeholder relations and risks. We then used our framework in a practical case with operational synergies among four actors, whereby fiber-sludge from a pulp and paper mill and bottom-ash from a waste incinerator are valorised in productive applications. We collected quantitative and qualitative data through desktop studies and semi-structured interviews with company representatives and used these to identify forms and scale of business value created. Similar to other studies, we identified considerable gains dues to cost reduction and new revenue generation. However, going above and beyond, our study allowed us to identify and assess a wider range of business value created by these synergies. Examples of these included: reduction of input supply, operational stability and regulatory compliance risks; development of new products; access to new markets and customers, and; innovations triggered by communication and learning among synergy partners that identified new opportunities, and in some cases already lead to process and product improvements. In our conclusions, we emphasise the importance of, and the need for, expanding such comprehensive assessments, as these will provide more representative knowledge of the business benefits IS does and can create and thereby secure increased support from private and public decision makers for scaling up IS practice. We also share our suggestions for improving our framework and invite interested parties to a dialogue for fur.
Keywords: Industrial symbiosis, business value.
5g. Special Track - Industrial symbiosis, networking and cooperation as part of industrial
