Framgångsfaktorer för hållbar innovation : En fallstudie av Stockholms biokolsprojekt

Sammanfattning: Innovation is often assigned an important role in mitigating climate impact and achieving sustainable development. Stockholm city has ambitious sustainability goals and aims to be carbon neutral by 2040. This will require an increased capacity when it comes to promoting and implementing innovative sustainability solutions. Climate friendly innovations need to move from environmental profile projects to the new “business as usual”.  The aim of this study is to contribute with knowledge about innovation processes within sustainable development and how they can be promoted.   Strategic Niche Management (SNM) is a model which was developed to support a transition to sustainable development by promoting sustainability innovations. SNM suggests a number of hypotheses regarding important features of successful innovation niches, factors that will increase the potential of innovations to be developed, implemented and spread. Stockholm Biochar project is an innovative project which has received attention for its success and potential to contribute to sustainable development by reducing the city’s net carbon emissions. A case study of the Stockholm Biochar project has been conducted to identify how the project emerged and the main success factors for its development. The case study was complemented with an interview study with personnel from Vinnova, the Swedish innovation agency, focusing on their experience of success factors for innovation processes. SNM:s hypotheses has then been used to analyze the result of the case study, which was also compared to the result of the Vinnova-study. The analysis to a large extent confirms SNM:s hypotheses, regarding what factors contribute to a successful innovation niche, but also provide some specifications and elaborations on what these hypotheses mean in this specific case. This result is used to suggest possible complements to the SNM hypotheses that can be useful in contexts similar to the one studied. The result also points out important success factors that are not covered by the hypotheses suggested in SNM. Particularly the case study shows the important role of passionate enthusiasts as driving forces for innovation processes which is not pointed out in SNM hypotheses. The identified success factors, in combination with the complemented hypotheses, are used to formulate recommendations for how an organization can promote innovation processes within sustainable development. In short, the study shows that successful innovation processes require assigned resources, commitment and strategic work, e.g. visions with clearly stated sustainability goals, continuous evaluations on how innovations are contributing to these goals, active measures for gaining support for the innovation on multiple levels in society, and financial space for the development of innovations. The study also confirms the function of protected innovation niches and suggests that passionate enthusiasts have a significant role in innovations processes.