Orchestration Barriers and Solutions in the Context of Eco-Industrial Parks and Circular Economy Ecosystems: A Study of the EcoSairila Eco-Industrial Park

Abstract

Objectives

The main objective of this study was to provide EcoSairila with a big picture of the strategic orchestration issues it would have to consider in the future.The first objective was to explore the risks and possible solutions with regards to orchestration that EcoSairila could replicate from the experiences of similar ecosystems and eco-industrial parks around the world. The second objective was to test and refine those recommendations in order to ensure their applicability to EcoSairila’s context.

Summary

A literature reviews was conducted in order to synthetize the largely unconsolidated academic literature on the orchestration of networks and ecosystems, in order to develop a comprehensive theoretical framework that would be applicable to an eco-industrial park’s context. Then, a benchmarking analysis was carried out in order to extract from 4 international cases diverse insights pertaining to orchestration that EcoSairila could implement. Subsequently, in order to refine and ensure the applicability of the benchmarking recommendations to EcoSairila’s context a series of interviews was conducted with managers both from the central-actor side, as well as from the non-central actors’ side. Both the benchmarking and the interviews data was analyzed using the deductive qualitative content analysis methodology. The results have shown that numerous orchestration mechanisms used by ecosystems and eco-industrial parks worldwide, in fact, belong to the set of capabilities that EcoSairila can deploy. Furthermore, the potential partner companies that are considering to relocate to EcoSairila have expectations with regards to ecosystem services to a large extent in tune with the actual capabilities of EcoSairila.

Conclusions

The main theoretical conclusion consists in the fact that a non-profit facilitator-orchestrator in the context of an eco-industrial park, such as EcoSairila, would need to consider at its birth stage not only the leader and promoter orchestration roles, but also the architect and developer roles. The main recommendation for EcoSairila consists in the fact that it needs to be especially proactive at its setup stage, in order to be able to attract diverse companies. One of the primary keys to achieving that objective reveals to be the differentiation strategy.