ABSTRACT
In environmentally sustainable matters, the government and industry have to innovate in a cooperative and interdependent way. They need each other to execute projects and to create conditions within which projects can thrive. A municipality may want to start a sustainable building project but needs developers who want to invest. A developer may want to set up a sustainable project but needs architects to work out the plans. An architect can invent a great way to develop sustainable designs but needs contractors to actually build them. The chain of actors is highly interdependent. Questions that arise here are, for example: Are the actors able of separately transforming their activities toward sustainability? Are they capable of integrating their own sustainability innovations with those of their partners in the building process? Do they speak the same language and understand each other well? Are they prepared to individually and cooperatively invest in sustainability, and how do they do that? The complexity of multiactor cooperation and innovation at the same time makes it difficult to realize sustainable innovations in building. But it’s not impossible given the public-private projects that have been successfully planned and realized in practice and studied in contemporary research (Bossink, 2002a, 2007b, 2009a, 2009b; Kivimaa and Mickwitz, 2006; Larsson, 1996; Rohracher, 2001). This chapter investigates how governmental and commercial firms separately and cooperatively innovate in sustainability and contribute to the industries’ innovativeness. It looks for answers to the following questions:
What independent governmental and commercial practices stimulate sustainable innovation in an industry?
What cooperative practices between governmental and commercial organizations stimulate sustainable innovation in an industry?
