Tag Archives: innovation intermediaries

Addressing barriers to eco-innovation: Exploring the finance mobilisation functions of institutional innovation intermediaries.

Joint work with a colleague from Wageningen University online:

This research article explores the role of institutional innovation intermediaries in accelerating the commercialisation of (clean) technologies. Drawing on the finance and innovation intermediaries literatures, we show that financial barriers to eco-innovation can be partly overcome by particular functions of institutional innovation intermediaries; this in turn mobilises private finance along the innovation process. Therefore, we empirically evaluate the roles and instruments of institutional innovation intermediaries (innovation intermediation, policy support, public–private cooperation, financial instruments). Our contribution intersects both the finance and the innovation systems literature by exploring the finance mobilisation functions of institutional innovation intermediaries to address barriers to eco-innovation along the innovation process.

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Catalysing the energy service market: The role of intermediaries

Joint work with SPRU/UK has been published:

The UK market for energy service contracts is expanding, owing in part to the emergence of intermediaries for those contracts in different parts of the public sector. These intermediaries combine a legal framework for establishing contracts with an organisational framework that facilitates contract negotiation and execution. This paper examines the nature and operation of these intermediaries in more detail, including their achievements to date and their similarities and differences. It uses ideas from transaction cost economics to develop a theoretical model of the contracting decision and shows how intermediary organisations can lower the transaction costs incurred by both clients and contractors, thereby increasing the viability of contracting. The paper argues that intermediaries can play an important role in expanding the market for energy service contracts, and hence in delivering cost-effective energy efficiency improvements throughout the public sector.

Read the paper open access here