Changing institutions and consumer-driven development of forest products and services

The forest sector has been able to develop many new bio-based and sustainable products catered to business-to-business markets, but the sector still lacks a breakthrough in new forest products and services targeting consumer markets. This is due to higher prices of forest products compared to competing materials, such as concrete, steel, and plastics, but also due to a lack of new product and service innovations targeting end-consumer markets. To understand the emergence of bioeconomy, also bringing new consumer market opportunities to the forest sector, we need to understand the new business ecosystem. The business ecosystem model is a holistic view of the current institutions capturing stakeholder relations and opportunities brought by various resources and technologies. Better understanding of these concepts can lead to consumer-driven development of forest products and services, and improved competitive advantage. This doctoral dissertation introduces a holistic research and development model for new product and service innovations in the forest sector. This research was motivated by the fact that recent forest sector product introductions have been driven by the technology push, and therefore, this research concentrates on the consumer perspective to build new business models and the development of products and services to meet current consumer trends. Evolving sustainability trends among consumers, where bio-based forest products and services can fulfill consumer demand, are central in this thesis. The doctoral thesis consists of one book chapter and three peer-reviewed articles, each using different methodologies. The subjects and results of the papers are grouped into three themes in the framework of the Consumer-Driven Business Ecosystem Research and Development (CDBERD) model. The model extends the classical “technology-push and demand-pull” innovation model, to better consider consumer values, enabling resources and dominant logics along with the smooth flow of information during each phase of the research and development process leading towards new consumer-driven solutions.