The Nexus Between Innovation, Value Chains, and Social Sustainability in the Context of a Bioeconomy Upgrading

The transition to a bio-based economy promises a path toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions while creating new business opportunities. However, a sustainable transition implies shifting from high-volume, low-value biomass technologies to advanced biotechnologies that minimize biomass requirements and negative environmental impacts while maximizing economic value-added. This accelerated innovation process, which we define as a bioeconomy upgrading, will likely reshape value chain structures and affect benefits distribution. Yet, previous studies have ignored the relationship between value chains and technological change in the bioeconomy. Using a qualitative approach based on value chain mapping, we develop an overarching conceptual framework based on six representative models of bio-based value chains to study the nexus between innovation, value chains, and social sustainability in the transition to a bioeconomy. This framework is illustrated with up-to-date business examples and validated through an expert survey. We find that a bioeconomy upgrading is associated with shorter and more vertically coordinated value chains, a leading role by big firms, and higher levels of research cooperation among firms. Finally, we argue that these changes in the organizational structures coming from accelerated bio-based innovation may expose the most vulnerable value chain actors to new risks and thus propose some lines of thought regarding the potential distributional effects.