Abstract
This article discusses the strategies that sustainable entrepreneurs use to interact with their environment in the Dutch construction industry. The Dutch construction industry is under great pressure to move towards sustainability, and entrepreneurs are believed to be able to play a large role in this transition by introducing new products and new business practices. But how can entrepreneurs prosper in an environment that is not geared up towards such a change? And which strategies do they use to bend conditions in their favor? In this article we make use of the Market and System Failure Framework to analyze the pressures that entrepreneurs are confronted with when introducing sustainable innovations. We recognize that these pressures can be seen as bottlenecks, but that market and system failures can also create entrepreneurial opportunities. We interviewed 16 entrepreneurs in the Dutch construction industry to determine the influences they experienced from their environment and the strategies they use to deal with these. We conclude that we can distinguish between system building and following entrepreneurs, where the former aims to build a new system to challenge the old one, whereas the latter rather makes use of existing structures to build a business. We find that both strategies can be successful and that overall, the entrepreneurs confirm the belief that sustainability on people, planet and transparency aspects, can contribute very well to the long term profitability of the businesses the entrepreneurs are running. These in-depth insights into the influences from the context on the one hand, and the entrepreneurs’ strategic reactions on the other hand, contribute to our understanding of the interactions between entrepreneurs and the system context. This can help us to more effectively stimulate and support innovating entrepreneurs to contribute to the transition towards sustainability.
Highlights
Society increasingly imposes a challenge for changing the nature of economic activities in almost every sector of the economy
The second reason to focus on the construction sector is because construction industries are not ‘footloose’, all progress that is made in improving the sustainability performance of the construction industry benefits the regions and countries they operate in, while at the same time knowledge and experience can be built up that can be sold internationally to strengthen the competitive position of the industry
With regards to the influences from the context we can conclude that the most important drivers for sustainable innovation were the general public awareness of sustainability after Al Gore’s plea for sustainability, and the entrepreneurs’ faith in the future of sustainable technologies, which is supported by the fact that they prove to be able to get sustainable profits out of their businesses
Summary
Society increasingly imposes a challenge for changing the nature of economic activities in almost every sector of the economy. This structural, long-term reorientation and transformation of economic activities is termed a transition [1,2]. In the building environment such a transition is desirable for two reasons. First this is because the construction sector is a big user of energy and materials, and creates much waste. The construction of buildings consumes annually 25% of the virgin wood and 40% of the raw stone, gravel and sand [3]. The second reason to focus on the construction sector is because construction industries are not ‘footloose’, all progress that is made in improving the sustainability performance of the construction industry benefits the regions and countries they operate in, while at the same time knowledge and experience can be built up that can be sold internationally to strengthen the competitive position of the industry
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