Co-ordinators:  Prof Phil Cooke
Centre for Advanced Studies, Cardiff University
44-45 Park Place, Cathays Park, Cardiff CF10 3BB, Wales, UK
Tel:  +44 (0)29 20 874945, Fax: +44 (0)29 20 874994, e-mail cookepn@cf.ac.uk
& Jesper Lindgaard Christensen, Aalborg University, IKE and DRUID, Denmark. Department of Business Studies, Fibigerstraede 4, DK-9220 Aalborg DE
Fax 45 98156013, Tel. 45 96358261, e-mail jlc@business.aau.dk

Introduction

The debate on the economics of the environment has produced only limited attention in innovation and entrepreneurship research into e.g. global warming, changes in energy consumption and other such trends. DIME stands for the study and diffusion of state of the art knowledge on Industrial Dynamics. The core of industrial dynamics concerns innovation and entrepreneurship – in this instance we propose ‘Green Innovation & Entrepreneurship’.
By Green Innovation we mean, first, the new technologies developed to mitigate environmental damage from waste and resource over-exploitation, second, innovations to moderate human contributions to climate change and, third innovations that manage the transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy.
By Green Entrepreneurship we mean those private or public actions that act as vehicles for policies or practices to introduce Green Innovation
This research therefore proposes investigation of the drivers of the present ‘paradigm polarisation’ including the mega-trends related to environmental challenges to transform industry and governance. The transformation pressures from these challenges are likely to require studies of a cross-disciplinary nature, spanning innovation theory, governance studies, entrepreneurship, and economic geography.
The present dissemination is a suggestion to let DIME spark an important process of enhancing the understanding of these challenges seen from a broad innovation theory point of view.  The DIME ‘Environmental Innovation’ workshop, and others will be associated closely to this. 

Research agenda

The general positioning of the workshop series can be specified in the following issues relevant to, but not limiting, the work.

1. Defining the field that contains ‘Green Industry’ activities such as sub-sectors of agriculture, materials, manufacturing, energy, transportation and waste management & recycling
2. Analysing the dynamics of  the multi-level governance and regulatory regimes that form the context for green Innovation & Entrepreneurship
3. Identifying the key investment and opportunity fields in, for example, clean technologies (energy, production, environment) and assessing their dynamics, and those of other  relevant fields

Objectives and deliverables

As mentioned above this is both an emergent and cross-disciplinary area within innovation and entrepreneurship studies. As a consequence the suggested objectives and deliverables reflect a process where ideas and research agendas are formed alongside more rigorous results from research.
The objectives are:

1. To understand the extent to which a Kuhnian/Freemanian technological paradigm shift  from an oil/chemistry to Bioeconomy regime is occurring, where the discursive power lies and what are key sources of resistance to paradigm change
2. To assess the viability of evolutionary/Schumpeterian versus other theoretical perspectives in explaining this possible global transition towards green innovation and entrepreneurship
3. To benchmark global good practice by firms and organizations in pursuing goals of socially responsible and profitable optimisation of ‘green’ welfare

The deliverables for 2008-2009 are envisaged to be 6 activities all of them closely related and logically ordered.

• A series of 3 workshops will be arranged. In these workshops preliminary ideas and unfinished papers may be presented to establish a further specification and discourse on the issues.
• A Working Paper series will be established that will display selected workshop papers and work from in between workshops. Previous work may also be published in this WP series.
• An internet debate forum will be established facilitating discussions on issues in 1) and 2) as well as more general discussions. Contributions and debates on this forum is also an important indication of which sub-issues attract interest.
• A Positioning Paper will be written outlining the challenges and direction of future research.
• A conference will be arranged focused upon the issues of the DIME SAL 3 action line and with 10-20 paper presentations. (to be held during DRUID, 2009)
• It is anticipated these will be the basis for producing a book or journal special issues on the basis of the papers from 5).