This research aims at investigating reasons why sustainable offerings fail to scale up outside small scale demonstrator projects designed and implemented in these niches. Baldassarre and Calabretta (2023) claim that most circular business model ideas fail to scale up because of the “design - implementation gap”, an example being the failed large-scale implementation of shared mobility such as car and lift sharing. Suggested reasons for failure include poor novelty, usefulness, trialability, observability, relative advantage, excessive complexity and strategic weaknesses. When exiting “incubator” niches, incumbent industrial organizations may not integrate the innovators and they may not share their values. Most sustainable businesses models rely on the establishment of collaborative networks, which is possible in small scale demonstrator projects, however scaling up these networks in open markets is challenging. We need to establish what are the causes of these failures and how they can be addressed. To diffuse in the open economy, resource efficient consumption and production offering need to break into the “industrial regime,” populated by established business organizations, which is a challenge. Innovations break and get established into the regime depending on developments in the socio-technical landscape, e.g. changes in legislation, economic and political factors such as tax and incentives. In the micro-environment, success factors include consumer acceptance. Knowledge of these aspects is insufficient.
This knowledge is necessary to reduce the environmental impact of consumption and production and enhance fairness of access to these resource efficient offerings. It is important to establish why these pilot offerings fail to scale up and what strategies enable scaling up to succeed. Failing to research how to resolve this impasse may result in more waste of public and private research funding. The research addresses lack of understanding of how an innovation pilot (and supporting network) can become an operational business and manage innovative exemplars out of living labs. The project ill investigate small scale local sustainability projects and support them in scaling up. Key beneficiaries of the research will be businesses, social entrepreneurs and local and national authorities supporting these demonstrator projects, who will gain ability to design and Implement strategies to avoid these failures.