NEW RESEARCH | Keys to success in times of change

Starting a business in a completely new industry, or transforming an existing business model into a more sustainable one. These are examples of development processes that companies need to manage properly to ensure they last over time.

– When building up a new type of business, there is not always knowledge to draw on. Knowledge often needs to be developed along the way, in collaboration with several different actors,” says Ulrika Harlin, who works at RISE and is a doctoral student at Linköping University.

In her doctoral thesis, she has studied rapid change contexts in the organizational and corporate world. For example, she has studied a Swedish start-up company in sustainable energy and its journey during the first three years. At the startup’s launch in 2017, sustainability issues were increasingly in focus on companies’ strategic agendas, but there was very little knowledge about how to develop businesses that can successfully meet these new needs and demands.

– When building a business from scratch, it is often the technical processes, such as materials supply, technology development and marketing, that receive the most attention. But you also need to build a people-focused organization that works in the real world. And this needs to be done at an early stage, because early planning phases create the basic conditions for future operations.

Stakeholder engagement is key

Building production and work processes in a new type of industry, or in an existing organization facing major rapid changes – for example during a pandemic – is special. Therefore, Ulrika Harlin argues, it is necessary to work across traditional boundaries between different actors and sectors. The startup in the study worked together with external partners at local and regional level to establish socially sustainable production and work processes early on.

– These included municipalities, trade unions and other industries. Building a large network is one of the keys to a successful work process.

– Stakeholders need to work together in a solution-oriented way in new areas towards an overall vision, such as contributing to the green transition. This is a win-win situation for everyone, as it not only benefits the “problem” being solved. Instead, the solutions provided by the collaboration often result in new thinking and that other problems and areas are also solved and can make you competitive.

Learning along the way

The second success factor for building organizational conditions that last over time is the learning perspective. When new areas are to be developed, the conditions are constantly changing and constant learning takes place. However, it is easy for lessons to be lost or to remain with individuals.

– We think that we should capture everything we have learned afterwards. But that usually never happens. So it’s important to build a systematic approach to learning,” emphasizes Ulrika Harlin.

It can be a good idea to use intermediaries, such as an external party that can bring together learning at all levels by listening to all stakeholders.

– In the start-up company I followed for three years, there was an external industry expert who informally and during structured meetings captured the perspectives of the various actors. In this way, they built up a large knowledge base together, with insights that could be taken into other contexts,” says Ulrika Harlin.

Contact ulrika.harlin@ri.se

More about the thesis
Ulrika Harlin works at the research institute RISE and will defend her thesis on September 6 at Linköping University Exploring the Handling of Critical Work Practices in Rapid Change Contexts: A study of an industrial startup and the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the study of the green industry startup mentioned in this article, it also includes a study of the rapid change context that the pandemic brought to organizations and companies in Sweden. The research is based on projects funded by Vinnova and AFA Insurance.