Commercialize Clean Technologies. A case study regarding commercialization of clean technologies through strategic partnerships in emerging markets

ABSTRACT Clean technology has been a growing sector because of emerging environmental issues and stricter regulations derived from these. The cleantech industry has despite its possibilities in this industrial shift experienced high failure rates in the commercialization process. To overcome the high failure rate, several obstacles within the commercialization process have to be recognized, such as the threats from imitators and the institutional void which is especially prevalent in emerging markets. Moreover, complementary assets needed for the often niche clean tech firms has to be accessed in an efficient and cost effective way. A suggested strategy to do this more successfully is to commercialize through a strategic partnership. Through a partnership, firms can receive competitive advantages eventuating in higher profits and more sustainable businesses, especially in these emerging markets where extended safeguard measures may be needed. The aim with this thesis was to develop a theoretical framework able to derive a partnership strategy for cleantech firms commercializing their technologies in emerging markets. A case study was conducted on the cleantech firm Aquaporin A/S in the potential emerging market of Brazil in order to prove the relevancy of the framework and illustrate its applicability on cleantech firms in general. However, the generalizability of the framework on cleantech firms at large could not be confirmed because of the limitations of a single case study