Market barriers for environmental innovations

This paper describes market barriers experienced by Swedish innovators in start-up companies early in the process of bringing environmental innovations to the market. The studied innovators are mainly active in a business-to-business market that often involves capital-intensive industry sectors and large companies are seen as important customers. Most of the market barriers identified can be related to customer relations. The innovators experience their customers’ negative attitudes and unwillingness to try new technologies as major barriers. Furthermore, they perceived their customers to be conservative and reluctant to take risks. These barriers may be relevant in most innovation developments although they may be more articulated for environmental innovations since such innovations mostly evolve in emerging industries and since capital-intensive industry sectors dominate the area. Measures to stimulate diffusion of environmental innovation are discussed, including ways to encourage customers to test new technologies and to see the adoption of the innovation as worth the perceived risks