Purpose – This study explores how a public client as a focal firm enables value co-creation through orchestration that includes navigating and bridging knowledge, business and innovation ecosystems.

Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on qualitative methods, with 25 semi-structuredinterviews being conducted with client representatives and project partners from four completed constructionprojects.Findings – Thisstudy shows how the orchestration of ecosystemsfor value co-creation in construction includesactivities within and across projects. While business ecosystem activities in projects tend to be exploitative,knowledge ecosystem activities are typically exploratory, and innovation ecosystem activities make up for thetransition from exploitation to exploration. Yet, the activities are not exclusive in this sense but entail varyingdegrees of exploration and exploitation. We show how a small public client firm that commissions new projectsand ownsits building stock can successfully orchestrate such activities. Guided by an internalstrategy and longterm commitment, the firm assumesthe role of a focal bridging actor and engages with multiple actorsin all threetypes of systems. We identify key factors contributing to client success in achieving high innovation ambitions:finding suitable partners,fostering strong relationshipsthroughout and among projects, continuously testing andcapturing learning from innovation, and engaging with the industry.Originality/value – This study shows how varying degrees of exploration and exploitation activities inbusiness, knowledge, and innovation ecosystems within and across projects contribute to value co-creation inconstruction. We show how a small public clientfirm that commissions new projects and ownsits building stockcan successfully orchestrate such activities by taking an active role as a focal firm, bridging different types ofecosystems for value creation from innovation. © Charlotta Winkler, Petra Bosch-Sijtsema and Eugenia Perez Vico

To address the challenges of energy transition necessary for sustainable development, incumbents must implement innovations, some of which are radical compared with their current competence-base or market solutions. This requires a thorough understanding of the prerequisites for implementing innovation. The literature on the factors influencing incumbents' implementation is vast and dispersed across multiple fields, with sometimes contradictory findings. As a result, it is difficult to get a clear picture what influences innovation implementation. This study explores the factors that condition the propensity of incumbent firms to implement radical innovations relevant to the energy transition and examines how these factors influence. A systematic literature review was conducted, covering 43 articles. The study identifies and explains the influence of 20 such factors on implementation. Nine factors are firm-external and relate to the themes of socioeconomic-political pressure, innovation conditions and industry conditions. Eleven factors are firm-internal and relate the themes of organisational properties, absorptive capacity, and internal alignment with the innovation. Causal relationships between these internal and external factors were discovered, as well as complementary influences on implementation. Potential future research venues are proposed, including scarcely recognized factors that merit further attention, factor complementarity and interdependency, and empirical gaps in terms of geographic context. It also offers policy and management implications, concluding that to gain a thorough understanding of the prerequisites for implementation, it is necessary to simultaneously consider a wide range of factors and their interconnectedness. © 2024 The Authors

Technologies such as district heating (DH), district cooling (DC) and heat pumps are essential for improving heating and cooling efficiency and supporting decarbonization goals. Although advancements such as nextgeneration DH promises lower temperatures and increased flexibility, these technologies are insufficient to reach such targets in isolation. While there is ongoing convergence between DH, heat pumps, and energy storage, the literature pays scant attention to how actors innovate by combining and integrating these technologies. Thus, there is a significant need for a greater understanding of the innovative efforts of DH firms. This study explains how seven European DH firms innovated to create and deliver value by changing their organizational, technological, and interfirm engagements. By analysing the cases through the lens of platform literature, our analysis reveals a shift away from traditional incumbent value systems and the emergence of new platform-based value systems that incorporate platform envelopment of gas and heat pumps into DH. The changes consist of three distinct innovation pathways. First, incumbent DH firms are improving traditional systems by refining customer interfaces and integrating digital services within their established firm boundaries. Second, smaller collaborative entrants engage with incumbents to form platform-based systems downstream of the incumbents. Third, larger disruptive entrants establish independent platforms with localized, network-connected heat pumps and storage, directly challenging incumbent value systems by offering alternative heating and cooling solutions. The study demonstrates that district heating is no island, but part of an interconnected and evolving ecosystem where innovation emerges through technological integration and inter-firm collaboration © 2025 The Authors.

Scholar-activism—academic scholars engaging in some form of activism—has recently become a prominent phenomenon as we witness calls for scholars to engage in political, social, and environmental causes that go beyond their traditional academic duties. An emerging literature focuses on scholar-activism as an object of study. However, the literature is scattered across rather disconnected disciplines and research fields, with few empirically and theoretically well-grounded studies. In this paper, we review this literature and identify the diverse ways in which the phenomenon of scholar-activism has been studied, what is known, and what remains to be explored. This study is based on a systematic scoping literature review drawing on a diverse set of 85 publications from fields such as sociology, geography, management studies, and pedagogy. From the inductive analysis of the papers, three major themes emerge: preconditions, forms, and implications of scholar-activism. Preconditions refer to individual, organisational, and institutional factors conditioning engagement in scholar-activism. Forms involve the various ways in which scholar-activism is enacted, including activist research, teaching, and collaboration. The implications include individual, epistemic, and societal consequences of scholar-activism. The findings of this study provide insights into the growing but still diverse literature on scholar-activism and identify areas for future research and theoretical development. © The Author(s) 2025.

This study explores how academic scientists engage as experts in public debates characterised by scientific uncertainty and societal urgency, focusing on rhetorical positioning and communicative intentions. The research centres around the debate concerning COVID-19 measures in Sweden and analyses 109 opinion pieces written by scientists in various newspapers. The analysis identifies four ideal-typical expert roles: Reformers, Advisors, Informers, and Evaluators. These roles illustrate how scientific expertise can serve multiple purposes in societal crises marked by uncertainty. Reformers take a critical stance, questioning foundational assumptions and advocating for systemic change. Advisors offer actionable recommendations in the face of uncertainty, while Informers contribute by clarifying facts and providing context; Evaluators look back to assess what has worked, guiding future improvements. The typology responds to calls for greater transparency and reflexivity among experts by illustrating the diverse ways scientists assume expert roles in public debate. Recognising the variety and complementarity of these roles and promoting awareness and openness about them can play an important role in sustaining science’s legitimacy amid uncertainty. By shedding light on scientists’ rhetorical positioning and communicative intentions, our framework supports a more structured and nuanced reflection on public engagement. Such awareness is necessary for building and maintaining public trust, particularly during times of crisis.

© The Author(s) 2025.

Literature on intermediation in transitions has emphasised the importance of publicly promoting intermediation. To understand what drives authorities to financially promote intermediation, we conducted an exploratory study of 16 Swedish municipalities promoting an intermediary actor in the mobility transition, applying the framework of drivers of collaborative governance. The results highlight drivers common to most municipalities, including among others administrators’ awareness of collaboration challenges, or their inability to conduct intermediary activities on their own. However, the results also reveal diversity and context dependency of the drivers, leading to municipalities voicing diverse and partly conflicting expectations towards the intermediary. These findings underline the importance of understanding the promotion of intermediation through municipalities as a transactional and personal relationship between administrators and intermediaries. They also underline the relevance of “affective work” to mitigating conflicts caused by the diversity of expectations facing intermediaries, and the importance of municipalities in shaping local ecologies of intermediation. © 2025 The Author(s)

Implementing solar photovoltaic systems in the built environment (BEPV) is critical for the construction sector’s contribution to mitigating climate change. While previous studies give various insights into innovation implementation, the challenges to value co-creation by construction actors remain underexplored. By studying the alignment of business ecosystems implementing BEPV in the Swedish built environment, we address this need. Drawing on the cumulative experience of construction actors, this study demonstrates how knowledge mislocation, knowledge deficits, cultural discrepancies, insufficient building codes, frequently changing regulations, and implementing a highly embedded innovation can disturb ecosystem alignment. The study contributes to the ecosystem literature, scholarly discussions of innovation implementation in complex construction projects, and the PV diffusion literature by offering insights into the realignment of ecosystems involving value co-creation by actors from previously unconnected industries. The study links PV diffusion research to the construction management literature by exploring the cumulative experience of implementation at the micro level. We highlight the significant industry reconfigurations required to accommodate a deeply embedded technological innovation, reconfigurations going beyond the challenges of implementing systemic innovations encumbered by fewer material dependencies. We also emphasize the critical importance of industrial interaction, coordination, and learning to accelerate the sustainability transition. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

There is limited understanding of how education initiatives geared toward faculty and support staff can foster a capacity for long-term and integrated societal engagement and collaboration within higher education institutions. Using the experiences from a cross-disciplinary pilot course in Sweden, the current study aims to identify features that explicate how skills and academic rigor for engaging in societal collaboration can be developed toward a “reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration.” Based on a case study of the course, we identify the need for (i) theoretical orientation, (ii) collective reflections among diverse participants, and (iii) application of gained knowledge in real-world contexts. Building on the experiences from the pilot course, we explore and discuss the participants’ reflections on how their partaking in the course may support a reflexive scholarship of societal collaboration. Our study is relevant to managers and policymakers interested in nurturing long-term and integrated collaborations between academia and various societal actors. © The Author(s) 2024.

This chapter explores the alignment between the stated intention of Swedish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to matter and the assessment of individuals to matter. To achieve this aim, HEIs collaboration strategies are compared with the criteria for the guidance for merits regarding docentship. Our analysis reveals a notable disparity: the societal collaboration visions outlined in strategies were rarely reflected in promotion guidelines. There is a substantial degree of variability in how these guidelines address collaboration merits. Despite the prevalence of ambitious strategies among HEIs, only a minority align these aspirations with guidelines that encompass the breadth and depth required for effective, high-quality collaboration. © The Author(s) 2024.

In this introductory chapter, we provide insights into the debates that inspired this volume. Our aim is to extend the boundaries of the concept societal interaction and discuss the conditions for universities to undertake such endeavors. Within this context, we introduce the matter of “mattering” which serves as the central theme that runs through this volume. Mattering, we posit, can be comprehended through three key concepts: collaboration, engagement, and impact. We outline how each concept contributes to an increasing understanding of the manifold ways in which mattering can be grasped and achieved. Furthermore, we provide an overview of the coherent set of individual chapters that, separately or jointly, deal with the three concepts. Through these chapters, this volume aims to make a valuable addition to the evolving literature that explores how universities can expand their impact beyond conventional higher education missions. Collectively, these chapters cover the context of the mattering of universities and draw on various empirical data sources, mainly from Sweden but also internationally. Within this compilation of inquiries, we shed light on the multifaceted impact of universities on societies, exploring the mechanisms, contexts, and temporal dimensions of their contributions to advancing knowledge and addressing societal challenges. © The Author(s) 2024.