Are strategy developers well equipped when designing sustainable supply chains for a circular bio-economy? Supporting innovations’ market uptake in a PESTEL + I environment

Abstract

Abstract Background Innovations and new supply chain concepts are crucial for establishing a sustainable and circular bio-economy that reduces carbon emissions and lowers negative environmental impacts. PESTEL-based concept development provides information about positive, negative and neutral external factors of the macro-environment and their influence on supply chains. The primary data were collected at a stakeholder workshop and gaps in understanding the critical details were closed through expert interviews. The information gathered was organised using a data management software and coded by following a deductively formed system based on predefined PESTEL categories (political, economic, social, technological, ecological, legal). Stakeholders that used the method on intermediate carbon carriers (ICC) grappled with identifying the obstacles that hinder the market uptake of innovations. The workshop revealed a substantial demand for additional information. Infrastructural aspects were considered key to adequately understanding all of the segments along a supply chain. Using PESTEL alone, without taking infrastructural aspects into consideration, meant that the macro-environment that surrounds and affects the ICC supply chain remained a black box. This paper developed docking-related approaches to the basic PESTEL method in order to improve its output for the development of strategic concepts and to improve the market uptake of bio-economy-centred innovations. Results The expanded PESTEL method (hereinafter PESTEL + I) significantly shifted the emphasis of strategic decisions to the marketing of individual innovations compared to the basic method. Docking information gathering onto infrastructure (+ I) should be considered in order to expand existing strategy development concepts for bio-economy value chains. Testing the market uptake of innovations was beyond the scope of this study. Conclusions PESTEL + I not only increased the utility, but also the complexity and the time needed to analyse an entire supply chain. The expanded method, however, provides stakeholders and strategy developers with a more useful tool to support and optimise market uptake strategies in the bio-economy. Beyond this, there is a knowledge gap with regard to reducing the effort needed to collect data and evaluate such studies. Hence, follow-up research needs to find ways to digitalise major steps in the overall process to make it more efficient.