Roles of intermediaries in supporting eco-innovation

Eco-innovation is an approach to environmental sustainability. However, the process of eco-innovation can be challenging especially for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Thus, SMEs might seek external support to tackle some of their challenges in eco-innovation. In this article, we focus on one type of organization providing and also assisting SMEs to access support, intermediaries, i.e. an organization or body that acts as an agent or broker in the innovation process. Intermediaries support firms in the innovation process through various generic and customised activities. To identify such activities and describe the roles intermediaries take in eco-innovation, we conducted interviews and documentation analysis on selected intermediaries in two regions - Scania, Sweden and North Rhine Westphalia, Germany. The identified roles among our cases include: (i) forecasting and road mapping, (ii) information gathering and dissemination, (iii) fostering networking and partnerships, (iv) prototyping and piloting, (v) technical consulting, (vi) resource mobilisation, (vii) commercialisation, and (viii) branding and legitimation. In relation to the specific characteristics of eco-innovations, the intermediary roles such as prototyping and piloting, information gathering and dissemination, and branding were directly targeted at validating the environmental benefits of eco-innovations to tackle their “double externality” challenge. However, we found little intermediation activities from our cases directed explicitly at policy change for eco-innovation. For policy makers, our results suggest a complementary use of different types of intermediaries to support eco-innovation.