Keywords

1 Introduction and Motivation

In 2004, based on the knowledge-based bioeconomy, the term “bioeconomy” found its way into the policy discussion in Europe.Footnote 1 Fourteen years later, within the framework of the Global Bioeconomy Summit (GBS) in 2018, over 700 representatives from politics, science, civil society, as well as the business sector from more than 70 countries gathered up to discuss the challenges and future of bioeconomy.Footnote 2 One may expect as an outcome of such an event a polished action plan of what exactly the next steps towards the implementation of bioeconomy need to look like. The actual result, however, tends to reduce one’s optimism. The question of a universal and streamlined definition of what precisely bioeconomy means includes and implicates on a global level, remained unanswered, and all that was gained is another document that offers general recommendations and states a general urgency, without providing concreteness. Especially against the backdrop of an official European Commission document—released about a year before the summit—explicitly stating the need for a common framework and giving concrete recommendations, makes the whole event appear to be redundant. Not surprisingly, more and more authors have started to focus on the negative aspects of the recent developments in bioeconomy. It has become “a buzzword used by public institutions”,Footnote 3 gets criticized “for being a weak form of ecological modernization aiming for increased exploitation of natural resources”Footnote 4 and the ongoing academic discussion “about its environmental aspects and its questionable and variegated integration of sustainability perspectives”Footnote 5 gains increased publicity. Whereby at its core, bioeconomy is not just a catchword, if some things are kept in mind.Footnote 6 First of all, the attempt to frame and define bioeconomy as a sector will not lead to satisfactory results. Various authors state the need to refer to bioeconomy as a multi-dimensional concept instead of a sharply defined sector. One of the main reasons for that is the fact that bioeconomy in itself is exceedingly fuzzy,Footnote 7 still in its infancyFootnote 8 and is, per se, nothing new.Footnote 9 These points have had a considerable influence on the predominant definition problem of bioeconomy. In general, the bioeconomy concept entails the sustainable use of renewable biomass instead of finite fossil resources for the development and production of various bio-based, value-added products, services, and energy. These work as substitutes for existing fossil fuel-based products, services, and energy and are a part of a broader societal transition to a low-carbon future.Footnote 10 It also promotes the Circular Economy concept as a natural fitFootnote 11 as well as the adoption of cascading, meaning to initially process biomass into high-value products, before using the residues for lower value applications until a minimum of waste remains at the end.Footnote 12 With being primarily conceptually based, we can think of bioeconomy “as a wholesale shift in the way our economies—and necessarily our societies and polities—are organized and coordinated such that they are no longer based on fossil fuels”.Footnote 13 However, in inhabiting this kind of conceptual flexibility, bioeconomy can be exploited to promote different and contrasting objectivesFootnote 14 and gets gutted as an irrelevant buzzword in many publications, policies, and reports. It has proven attractive to many different actors because it can mean something for everyone—it is many things to many people.Footnote 15 Its holistic approach can thus be seen as its strength on the one hand, but also as its weakness on the other: a “fetishization of everything bio-”Footnote 16 takes places, while the role of bioeconomy as a powerful meta-discourseFootnote 17 should not be underestimated.Footnote 18 In conclusion, bioeconomy has most definitely the potential to affect a fundamental change in the industry,Footnote 19 although it is not as straightforward as many researchers, politicians, and decision-makers may think.

At the same time, our economy faces a lock-in into a fossil-based and CO2-intensive production mode,Footnote 20 which certainly is a significant hurdle for bioeconomy to overcome. Matteo de Besi and Kes McCormickFootnote 21 see the solution in a transformative change that involves long-term approaches and interactions at all levels of society. Their vision gets supported by Birch, as he sees bioeconomy as a socio-technical transition.Footnote 22 However, “[…] the geographical dimensions of such transitions are often ignored or overlooked in existing research”Footnote 23 but are a vital element for a successful transition. It is indeed a transformation that would change the social, technical, and material elements of specific systems.Footnote 24 For this transition, innovation is seen by various authors as one, if not the critical factor for moving forward.Footnote 25 However, the innovation term is again used quite inflationary, even more so in the bio-economic context. Especially in some European Union (EU) policies, the combination of both terms—bioeconomy and innovation—needs to be critically reviewed.Footnote 26 The research landscape regarding innovations in a bio-economic context appears to be quite empty so far,Footnote 27 even though the above-mentioned authors mutually agreed on it being one of the building blocks of bioeconomy. Thus, the motivation for this article is to showcase what the innovation term explicitly implicates for the concept of bioeconomy and which factors can influence innovation in a bio-economic context.

2 Innovation as a Concept

The introduction shows that bio-economic innovation is, as well as bioeconomy itself, neither well defined nor understood. Thus, this article will first focus on the theoretical foundations of innovation. The general importance and relevance of the concept of innovation were emphasized repeatedly in research both in the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Especially for the (long-term) competitiveness of companies and regions, it is seen as one of the main driving forces, because of the implementation of novelty and variety. Succeeding in innovation lets companies prosper; innovative countries and regions have a higher income than less innovative ones and catching up with innovation leaders means increasing a company’s innovation activity.Footnote 28 In conclusion, innovation is seen as a pretty necessary factor. However, the meaning of innovation and especially how and when it occurs are not entirely clear.Footnote 29 Innovation itself is not a new phenomenon, it is arguably as old as humankind itself.Footnote 30 While we know quite well where innovation leads to, we know much less about the why and how innovation occurs. Since multiple researchers in different working fields tried to grasp innovation and customize it to fit their specific scientific area, a certain “fuzziness” around the term and its various conceptual framings can be noticed.Footnote 31 In the following, essential currents of the different types, models, and finally, levels of innovation are briefly presented in order to form a basis for the bio-economic discourse.

2.1 Innovation: Models, Types, and Levels

The linear model of innovation is, without a doubt, one of the first frameworks which got developed for understanding the relation of science and technology to economy. It implies that innovation starts with basic research, followed by applied research and development, before ending with production and diffusion.Footnote 32 However, in Jan Fagerberg’s opinion, innovation has little to do with this linear model. He argues that it is based on the assumption of innovation being applied science, while in reality, firms usually innovate because of a commercial need to do so.Footnote 33 Benoît Godin opposes this by saying that the model is merely a “rhetorical entity, […] a thought figure”Footnote 34 that makes the otherwise fuzzy concept of innovation easier for administrators and agencies to grasp.Footnote 35 Besides, Schumpeter is, without a question, the most influential name when talking about innovation. He invented the “trinity” of the innovation process, resulting in the indistinction between invention (new ideas are generated), innovation (ideas are developed into processes and products), and diffusion (spreading these processes and products across markets).Footnote 36 Joseph Schumpeter therefore not only introduced innovation as a process, but also made the vital distinction between invention and innovation into two separate parts of the concept, which nowadays get mixed up quite often. The linear model of innovation arose only due to interpreters of Schumpeter’s work, who anchored it into the context of the technology-push and demand-pull debate.Footnote 37 Simple models, like the differentiation into product and process, as well as physical and intangible innovations, can be found as the basis of more advanced concepts (Fig. 7.1). Often used for policy recommendations, the innovation systems perspective achieved scientific attention in recent years. It combines all essential economic, social, political, organizational, and other factors that influence the development, diffusion, and use of innovations,Footnote 38 while also stressing out linkages between these actors.Footnote 39 Thus, all innovation processes are naturally embedded in innovation systems. Further, the concepts of “Technology Innovation Management” (TIM) and “Open Innovation” (OI) tend to get highlighted quite often in recent innovation literature.Footnote 40 TIM “seeks to understand how novel technologies and innovations emerge and how they can be commercialized successfully”.Footnote 41 It thus attempts to decipher the most-asked question since the days of Schumpeter. OI, on the other hand, gets mentioned as a subfield to TIM that is rapidly becoming a dominant approach innovation.Footnote 42 It can be defined as “the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand the markets for external use of innovation”, thus considering the “boundaries between the firm and its surrounding environment […] to be more porous which allows knowledge and innovation to move more easily between the two”.Footnote 43

Fig. 7.1
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Innovation fields in manufacturing firms (Kirner et al. 2009)

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That leads us to one of the basic terms of the innovation vocabulary: knowledge. It provides a crucial input to innovation in that it enables actors to understand the world and make decisions that affect it.Footnote 44 Kean Birch also underlines the importance to differentiate between different types of knowledge: appropriable (restricted access) and non-appropriable (free to access),Footnote 45 as well as tacit (knowing-how) and explicit (knowing-that) knowledge.Footnote 46 These terms are essential in the further course of the article, especially for the understanding of spillovers, collaborations, and Birch’s knowledge-space dynamic.

It becomes apparent that the concept of innovation can be combined with different approaches, which can be understood as a renewed indication of its adaptability but do also provide another argument for its breadth and fuzziness. Besides models, this affects types of innovation as well. Tzeng, for example, distinguishes between the following three leading schools of innovationFootnote 47 (Table 7.1):

Table 7.1 The main schools of Schumpeterian innovation (Tzeng, 2014)
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Terms like “technical innovation” and “administrative” or “management innovation” were brought forward as well, resulting in even more spin-offs, like organizational innovation.Footnote 48 The latter is defined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as “the implementation of a new organizational method in a firm’s business practices, workplace organization or external relations”.Footnote 49 It is furthermore stated that “other scholars also developed typologies for understanding organizational innovation; however, many of them are overlapped”,Footnote 50 thus providing another argument for a conceptual “one size fits all”-mentality of innovation. Into the same category fall responsible innovation and social innovation. Responsible innovation includes the future-oriented organization of development and is defined as a “transparent, interactive process by which societal actors and innovators become mutually responsive to each other with a view to the (ethical) acceptability, sustainability and societal desirability of the innovation process and its marketable products”.Footnote 51 Social innovation, on the other hand, emphasizes the importance of active citizenship in innovation.Footnote 52 By now, the diverse phenomenon of innovation and its redundant concept become clear.Footnote 53

Besides the mentioned knowledge, another core term is “creative destruction”, or, respectively, “incremental” versus “fundamental change”. Nowadays, this dichotomy is also described as the level of innovation and, spanning back to Schumpeter, creative destruction is one of the two possibilities for change to occur. The incremental type describes small improvements along well-known trajectories, while the fundamental, or creative destruction type, which leads to structural changes, for example the emergence of new and the disappearance of old industries,Footnote 54 meaning a “wholesale transformation of socio-technical systems”.Footnote 55 By now, it has become evident that there seems to be a jungle of innovation concepts, lots of “alternative models, with their multiple feedback loops [that] look more like modern artwork or a “plate of spaghetti and meatballs” than […] useful analytical framework[s]”.Footnote 56 Bioeconomy by itself was identified as a fuzzy concept, and the innovation concept does not look much different. At a basic level, innovation is doing the old in a new way, while the idea behind bioeconomy is pretty much the same. Sadly, combining minus and minus does not automatically result in plus like in mathematics, so bio-economic innovations need to be individually reviewed.

2.2 Innovation in Bioeconomy

With the beginning of the twenty-first century, a paradigmatic shift towards a somewhat sustainable and smart economy is in the air.Footnote 57 Various authors agree on the appraisal of bioeconomy as one of the central factors for this change, which is unfortunately impaired by a fundamental uncertainty.Footnote 58 The creative destruction gets mentioned,Footnote 59 and the transformation process is believed to span over a large part of the twenty-first century.Footnote 60 This will lead to the reorganization of the whole world economic system, thus being an indispensable part of our future society.Footnote 61 The lack of systematic assessment, however, is seen as one of the hurdles for this transition to take placeFootnote 62; the diffuse nature and unclearness remain to be seen as problems that need fixing as soon as possible.Footnote 63 But how exactly does this lack of systematic assessment look like? A publication analysis, conducted in the database Web of Science Core Collection (WoS), with the advanced search string.

  • TS = (bioeconomy AND innovat*) OR TS=(bioeconomy AND innovat*) OR TS=(bio-eco* AND innovat*),

resulted in a total of 292 found publications in the research field of bio-economic innovations (Fig. 7.2).

Fig. 7.2
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Resulting numbers of publications in the database Web of Science

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The exponential growth of annual publications since 2014 can be seen, proving a significant interest in the topic in recent years. The reason behind that might be an increasing number of countries incorporating bioeconomy into their national strategies and policies as well as thereby triggering scientific interest in the topic. However, of these 292 publications, only 13 include statements about bio-economic innovation factors. An explanation here could be the degree of fuzziness of both concepts. The hurdle of lacking assessment and again, the breadth of the bioeconomy concept can thus be underlined. Together with drivers that can benefit or even trigger innovations from the general innovation literature, influential factors that are found in these 13 publications can now be further looked at.

Birte Golembiewski et al. conducted a publication analysis to achieve an overview of the current research landscape dealing with bioeconomyFootnote 64 and highlight the challenges of technology and innovation management (TIM) for bioeconomy. They state the cross-sectorial character of bioeconomy and thus the need for interdisciplinary approaches. The need for broader, holistic approaches to bioeconomy can be found in other publications as well. Fredric Bauer speaks of the demand for a long-term, holistic perspective and adaptive policymaking,Footnote 65 Georg Schütte states the need for “holistic, systemic perspectives and solutions”,Footnote 66 while Dries Maes and Steven van Passel reject approaches that focus on research and development alone.Footnote 67 As already briefly mentioned, knowledge is commonly seen as a core factor for innovation,Footnote 68 and this is no different in the bio-economic context.Footnote 69 Actually, in the early days of bioeconomy, it was called the “knowledge-based bioeconomy” in the European Union. Marlon Fernandes Rodrigues Alves et al. see knowledge as the “most important resource and thus learning as the most important process”.Footnote 70 Knowledge also is deeply intertwined with location or space of origin. It can come from diverse locations and in many forms, while every spatial context is unique, knowledge entails geographical specificity.Footnote 71 Birch calls that connection the “knowledge-space dynamic”.Footnote 72 He argues that innovation occurs in specific locations, where firms and other organizations have access to complementary capabilities because of their co-location and proximity to one another. Knowledge can thus leak between actors, lead to an iterative process of learning and bolster the occurrence of bio-economic innovation.Footnote 73 Birch’s knowledge-space dynamic is solidly underpinned by a Schumpeterian understanding of innovation. Pyka frames it as a Neo-Schumpeterian approach: they highlight the complementary interplay in knowledge generation and diffusion processes between firms, consumers, and government institutions,Footnote 74 thus emphasizing innovation as an interactive process between multiple actors.Footnote 75 Bauer states the crucial link between university research and private sector research, therefore cross-sectoral research, while Birch also mentions the relevance of multi-scale, therefore international linkages.Footnote 76 The importance of the encompassing environment, as seen in Birch’s knowledge-space model, needs to be kept in mind as well.Footnote 77 By looking at company’s internal processes, factors that influence the emergence of innovation can of course also be identified there. Cheng-Hua Tzeng highlights the importance of long-time commitment to financing the development of new technologies.Footnote 78 He further argues, in the sense of the cultural innovation school, that technical innovation is not necessarily the outcome of digging information out of books or articles, but rather is a set of skills that cannot be reduced to a science.Footnote 79 Innovation in bioeconomy is seen as a “rather complex, collaborative, and multi-level process which is embedded in innovation systems”,Footnote 80 and it is, in general, a good idea to “broaden one’s perspective on innovation”.Footnote 81 It needs to be assured, though, that there are different innovation paths. Not every firm innovates by developing new products; services can be innovative as well as the introduction of innovative manufacturing technologies or the implementation of innovative organizational concepts.Footnote 82 Jan Fagerberg et al. stated the importance of the environment for innovation, which is also a major factor in the Open Innovation concept. However, Open Innovation relies heavily on trust between actors. Most collaborations are undertaken with already known partners, to reduce the risk of knowledge theft or involuntarily outgoing spillovers.Footnote 83 Of course, one could always argue that a certain openness towards new collaborations and, following that, knowledge exchange needs to be the standard case, but it is not an easy task to achieve—and definitely cannot be taken for granted. Especially with regard to the bioeconomy concept and its uncertainty, the acceptance of firms seems to be a problem and is considered a significant hindrance to innovation. Not only that, but the lack of acceptance of consumers and thus the society in general is a hurdle as well.Footnote 84 A limited consumer understanding of bioeconomy might as well reduce the market demand and the innovation capacity as a whole,Footnote 85 because apparently “a bio-economic innovation will only be successful if consumers accept it”.Footnote 86 This is why authors recommend, besides Open Innovation that includes consumers and users into the innovation process, a whole portfolio of policy changes, to address all actors relevant in a given innovation system. Louise Staffas et al. argue that various national strategies and policies include innovation, but few go beyond a general recommendation.Footnote 87 The need for coherence of national and international strategies is stated widely,Footnote 88 as well as a coordinated and in-depth approach that includes entrepreneurial activities, knowledge diffusion, guidance, market formation help, resource mobilization, and the creation of legitimacy.Footnote 89 Policies especially need to account for the fact that innovation is not only taking place within R&D intensive high-tech sectors or in high-tech firms alone.Footnote 90 Bauer explains further that the transition also needs a general change of behaviour and expectations among consumers and an institutional change regarding norms, standards, and regulations.Footnote 91 He also states the need to let firms innovate at their own pace, because innovation is, as shown, nothing that can be triggered, but something that can be positively influenced. What is more, science and technology alone will not manage to solve the transition puzzle, politics need to intervene and help to initiate the change.Footnote 92 An appropriate innovation agenda, a national strategy that influences all policy areas, supports new technologies and finds new ways of financing deployment and diffusion of innovation is needed.Footnote 93

3 Criteria for Bioeconomy Innovations

The findings of the previous chapter are now to be compiled within the framework of a criteria catalogue. Van Lancker et al. deliver a useful entry point for this. They incipiently state the importance of radically new and disruptive innovations, such as new business models, reconfigured value chains or the creation of entirely new value chains, while also considering the intricate knowledge base of various sciences. Cooperation between different actors can help develop this sophisticated knowledge, while commercialization and adoption of new bio-economic technologies and products are seen as a challenge, due to high switching costs and the locked-in state of economy. Complex and fragmented policy schemes form another challenge, as many of the new concepts are expected to comply with a number of different policy schemes and are also subject to regulation from different administrative levels. The authors conclude that “innovation processes […] are best considered as transdisciplinary endeavours, open to relevant stakeholders, with ample room for iterativety between idea development, invention and commercialization”.Footnote 94 Organizations need to “[strive] to innovate towards the bioeconomy”Footnote 95 while “leadership should embrace innovation and openness”,Footnote 96 and the “organizational culture should reflex this”.Footnote 97 “Available knowledge, expertise and technology need to be scrutinized, […] relational capability and absorptive capacity need to be adequate”.Footnote 98 Additionally, Tzeng emphasizes that “most important pathways include joint or cooperative ventures, contract research, consulting, informal interactions, conferences, and publications”.Footnote 99 Based on the comprehensive literature work in the previous chapters, the following criteria catalogue can be established (Table 7.2).

Table 7.2 Criteria catalogue based on literature
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In the following, the criteria and accompanied keywords are described in detail. Regarding Knowledge and Awareness, some knowledge base needs to be present. This knowledge base can consist of human capital, an experience shared inside a company, a cooperation with a research institute, or any other form that is capable of providing knowledge. The distinction between appropriable and non-appropriable knowledge is needed as well because the barriers and hurdles that need to be overcome to get inputs are important factors for the successful acquisition and should be known to the company. Besides general awareness over the recent activities in their particular working field, an idea about potential spillover effects and how knowledge flows inside, but also outside of the firm, are regarded as influential factors. Talking about the barrier between a company and the surrounding world introduces the following criteria: openness and collaboration. While the known distinction between vertical and horizontal cooperation is again more on the “beneficial-when-known-and-exploited” side of things, multi-scale linkages across more than one layer are regarded as highly potent factors for innovation. Especially when talking about the cooperation and collaborations of a company, the general rule seems to be that the more are present and used, the better, because of the unavoidable flow of knowledge. Of course, the degree and intensity of the connections and linkages are essentially important, as well as trust between the actors. Trust is an even more essential factor of the Open Innovation approach, which supports dismantling strict company boundaries about knowledge transfer and is proven to influence innovation activities. Nevertheless, not only the company itself inherits certain criteria that could potentially favour the creation of innovation, a supportive environment is a bolstering factor as well. Not only is proximity regarded as a big driver, because the knowledge flow can occur with a much higher frequency and also often in a face-to-face manner, but the supportiveness of the surrounding plays an essential role too. Without it, companies lose a potential partner on a political level and do also run the risk to antagonize it against them, which always creates an obstructing atmosphere. The supportiveness often influences and is directly influenced by the dynamic of a surrounding region and its actors. New ways of thinking, living, and guiding political decisions create a favourable environment that is suitable to handle innovation that may influence their daily living. Assisting policies and government need to have, most of all, a clear and with higher authorities coherent understanding of the target of a bioeconomy process to be able to support companies and actors at the right places and times. A holistic approach, instead of a narrow sectorial-based one to the bioeconomy can help decision-makers to receive a better outline of the term and its implications for our future but also yields a synopsis over certain connections, which otherwise would have been overseen. Funding and support can thus also reach otherwise overlooked actors and firms, and again, the aforementioned holistic view creates a bigger picture for policymakers to decide financial support on. Acknowledging the need for a transformative change and thus creative destruction of the present lock-in state can go hand in hand with open-mindedness regarding bioeconomy and innovations in general and thus is seen as another favourable factor. Not only politics and governmental activities can create a benefitting environment for innovation to occur, but also the society and consumers play a significant role. The importance of their acceptance and understanding of bio-economic principles has already been described, but a particular degree of certainty regarding future developments in economy but also politics supports them in making educated decisions and take on a progressive standpoint. At the consumer side, the demand for a new product or process can create an increasingly strong pull and thus urges actors to come after it, often being innovative in adapting their production systems to the new market demand. Company management naturally needs financial and social capability in order to be actively engaged in innovative activities. Acceptance and also knowledge about said bio-economic principles is regarded as important as allocating R&D expenditures. The significance of a certain openness, especially towards incoming and not-yet-known linkages and further towards broader ideas, developments, and implications, was again described above. Long-term planning does not favour innovative undertakings on its own, but when paired with knowledge about the need to change current economic or ecologic behaviour can become a driver for innovation. Watching the market demand closely and acting upon being aware of potential gaps may also provide companies with opportunities to establish new products. The last criterion that got deducted is feasibility. It can be seen as an outlier because it is assumed that innovation is not triggered simply because something is feasible or not. Rather it should be seen as a supportive criterion once an innovation is already on its way to establishment. It was shown that innovation needs implementation; if any one of the technological, social, environmental, or ecological feasibility is not given, implementation will face serious barriers along its way. The same holds for sufficiency and efficiency; innovators need to assure both for a smooth transition from the invention- to the innovation-phase. Lastly, the needed resources need to be available and adequate with a sustainable infrastructure in place.

At this point, the question about criteria specific to bioeconomy rises; the literature review did not yield any specifics, which is why the above criteria catalogue does not include any. One may think initially of sustainability as a criterion. However, sustainability is another buzzword, encompassing already existing criteria and thus would only add another unnecessary layer on top of the other two, bioeconomy and innovation. A company may undertake activities that result in innovation, but the actual reasoning behind it is often not the need or want to be more sustainable, but to be more efficient or effective, and thus it may use sustainability as a disguise. Otherwise, when a company is forced by an external entity to be more sustainable, sustainability can be seen as a trigger for innovation. Actors that use biological resources, biomass, see themselves as sustainable by definition, as their work needs to be in a sustainable manner in order to secure their livelihood for the present and future. Sustainability is promoted on many political levels, present in the policy discussion for at least 20 years, and promoted all over the world, whereas at its core, it is the simple concept of not destroying what you live on. Sustainability may thus be regarded as a trigger for bio-economic innovations but will not be included in the above catalogue, because of its over-usedness, buzzword-character, and unspecific approach.

4 Conclusion

Innovation plays a vital role in our modern economy and society. Bioeconomy, especially in light of the ongoing development of a “new green revolution”, appears to manifest itself as an essential factor when talking about possible ways out of a fossil lock-in. With the help of a literature review and a theoretic outlook, this article highlights what factors possibly influence innovation in the context of bioeconomy. Its relevance thus lies in providing a holistic overview of the combination of two terms that are by themselves not easy to frame, thus making the first step towards a remarkable, new research area within the growing bioeconomy discourse. The importance of a shift towards this new economic principle has been stated numerous times in recent years. As this catalogue of criteria is based solely on theory, it needs to be validated with practical examples as a next step; the work on it is far from finished. However, using it as a mere guideline should provide researchers with a good foundation for their work. The article’s general approach towards innovation and bioeconomy topics may also help conceiving them from another, maybe new, point of view. However, what has also become clear is the lack of criteria unique to bioeconomy in the literature. Neither the cascading nor the circular economy approach are mentioned as triggers for innovation, while they are perfect examples for innovation out of necessity and thus need to be further investigated. Then again, because bioeconomy cannot be described as a single economic sector, but rather as a concept that spans across multiple sectors, finding particular innovation criteria for it is not an easy task. Sustainability was mentioned but got disregarded because of its comprehensive approach. This means that, in the end, innovation in bioeconomy seems to be based mostly on general criteria. Thus, as a result, the conceptuality of the innovation term can be underlined as well as the broadness of bioeconomy itself which leads to the insight that further research on the topic is still needed.