Background
In the presence of accelerating climate change and growing social inequalities, system-level transitions are needed to bring about more sustainable modes of production and consumption. This requires new forms of collaboration across industries and sectors to support the development and scale-up of sustainability-improving solutions.
In the eColabor research project, we investigate the governance of multi-stakeholder collaboration toward sustainable innovation in ecosystems. Ecosystems refer to multi-actor arrangements geared toward the development and execution of joint, system-level solutions.
Despite their promise to support sustainable innovation, ecosystems introduce new challenges on actors participating in them. In eColabor, we examine these challenges and how they can be mitigated through management, law, and policy frameworks to enable collaboration toward sustainability-improving solutions.
Goal
The purpose of the eColabor project is to create new insights on the governance of sustainability-oriented ecosystems.
By combining expertise in law, policy, and management research, the project seeks to answer three research questions:
- What kind of tensions are associated with sustainability-oriented ecosystems, and how can these tensions be addressed through ecosystem governance?
- What are the main areas of private law and policies, as well as related innovation management strategies, that need to be revised to support ecosystem goverance toward sustainable solutions?
- What are the policies and procedures that support the long-term participation of actors in the formation and governance of sustainability-oriented ecosystems?
Impact
Through trans-disciplinary collaboration, the project creates new understanding on the interplay between law, policy, and management factors in the governance of sustainability-oriented ecosystems. This provides tools for:
- Identifying how to best manage multi-stakeholder collaboration in support of sustainable innovation.
- Extending present discipline-focused understanding on the factors that influence the governance of sustainability-oriented ecosystems.
- Developing pathways and models for improving ecosystem governance at different levels from legal and policy frameworks all the way down to relational coordination mechanisms in specific ecosystems management strategies.
Funding
The eColabor project is funded by the Research Council of Finland (Suomen Akatemia).
Partners and co-operators
The eColabor project is carried out in collaboration between University of Lapland, Faculty of Law, and Tampere University, Faculty of Management and Business.