A business value framework for industrial symbiosis

Abstract

Industrial symbiosis can be seen as a collaborative process where actors jointly identify, develop, and maintain resource management innovations, primarily related to secondary material and energy flows, to reduce waste generation and increase resource efficiency. Although industrial symbiosis is commonly recognized and promoted as a process creating business values for involved businesses, knowledge of what kind of values are created and how remains unstructured—and possibly incomplete. This is problematic because, without wider considerations as to what business values can be created through industrial symbiosis, the concept may not garner sufficient support from businesses and policy makers. Therefore, this paper aims to develop and present a framework that captures the wide range of business value propositions of industrial symbiosis, including benefits and sacrifices, along with their enabling mechanisms. The framework was developed based on a synthesis of the literature and interviews with actors involved with existing industrial symbiosis networks and is divided into four domains: costs, revenues, risks, and soft values. Beyond providing an overview of industrial symbiosis business values, the framework has additional uses, such as assisting in negotiations of relationship governance terms, including pricing and compensation mechanisms.