Henrik Riisgaard

Making carbon-fibre composite ferries a competitive alternative: the institutional challenges

Public policies and governmental structures are expected to provide incentives for a sustainable development, but some structures are developed for different purposes and instead create barriers to new innovations. In the case of small displacement island ferries in European waters, the institutional settings favour less sustainable solutions, namely steel designs, although lighter alternatives in carbon-fibre composites are available. Network collaboration can be seen as a method for actors to overcome barriers to the development of a new technology. This paper shows how a number of small actors in a network develop capabilities to overcome institutional barriers in the ferry sector in order to get the eco-innovations on the market. The analysis shows that the network changes the institutional setting for the new technology in a manner in which the individual actors would not be able to change it themselves.

Light Island Ferries in Scandinavia: A Case of Radical Eco-innovation

This chapter shows how a radically new technology can be developed. Through a case study based on interviews and action research, this chapter deals with displacement island ferries in European waters where a radical innovation is made in the shift from steel designs to a lighter carbon-fiber composite alternative. A key characteristic for eco-innovation is that it combines techniques, practices, and knowledge across existing boundaries. Networking and collaboration therefore become important for creating ideas and implementing these in order to get the environmental innovations on the market. The analysis focuses on three main principles that together constitute the radical change in the technology, namely, (1) light construction inspired from yacht racing; (2) to leave ashore what is not needed at sea, also adopted from yacht racing; and (3) to make a modular design that makes the use of the ferries more flexible, which is adopted from the naval sector. The case study shows how new actors on the market create this radical innovation and build a network to support the solution. The new actors, even though they are to some degree competitors, have chosen to collaborate and to access the ferry sector, a sector that they have not previously targeted as their primary sector. The actors have experience with carbon composite technology and are not fixed by a production based on steel. This allows them to introduce this technology as a disruptive innovation that challenges and changes the way ferries are produced.