Start-ups developing business relationships in the Swedish energy system

Paper in proceeding, 2018

This paper focuses on the process of starting up in the Swedish energy system and in particular how existing resource structures both facilitate and hinder commercialization of new innovations that may contribute to renewable energy solutions. The Swedish energy system is an outcome of many years of investments being made in both public and private infrastructures that can be seen as a ‘heavy resource structure’. However, the current ‘heavy resource structure’ containing for example refineries that generate products from fossil fuels is now subject to huge challenges and must open up for new actors and resources to meet the new demands. By using a case methodology this paper aims to explore how to capture the starting up process in the Swedish energy system and specifically the interplay between organizational and technical resources as a way to embed new technical solutions in already established resource structures. The theoretical starting point is the Industrial Network Approach and especially the concepts of resource interaction and resource interfaces.