RESEARCH CAPABILITY AND APPROACH

Transitions to sustainable future industries involve a diversity of knowledges, capabilities and values. Disciplinary knowledges need to be integrated at multiple, strategically identified points in order to best innovate towards and manage such transitions.

Disciplines are in part defined by the trained emphasis on and setting aside of certain questions and ways of finding out. As such, when describing relatively unshaped subject matter, such as emerging industries and economies, disciplines working in isolation will face greater challenges de-risking and adequately accounting for broader system complexities. For example, science and design projects focused on material characteristics and product potentials ought to be guided by sustainability and systems knowledge that informs circular economy principles and metrics. Likewise, projects focused on systemic concerns associated with sustainable production and consumption will benefit from understanding the way people interact with and attach specific meanings to things—a kind of knowledge acquired through design research (D’Olivo and Karana 2021). New ideas will not hold unless they are rooted in practical, material realities and attendant to the challenges and paradoxes of ordinary experience.

Expertise acquired in disciplines is however equally important as disciplinary integration for a robust approach to research. In this sense, the research process that underpins this report is defined by simultaneously maximising disciplinary contrast and integration.


METHODS
This scoping study is the product of a mixed-methods approach to research that draws on and goes beyond the research capability of our team. The way these methods have been used in our research is briefly elaborated below.

Literature review
We undertook a targeted review of case studies and literature relating to the industrial and technical context of our project to help identify and compare alternative options regarding the characteristics of a potential bioplastic production hub in regional NSW. We started with a high-level desktop survey of major themes (algae, manufacturing and organisational models) and drew on expertise within the broader research team and institutional context. The review deepened into areas of interest as they emerged and responded to iterative discussions within scoping study group and the larger project team. These areas included: algal production and wastewater treatment requirements, business models that might enable innovation and benefits to circulate through the local stakeholders, and material and formal characteristics of algae bioplastics.

Semi-structured interviews
Interviews were conducted from September to November 2021 with a targeted mix of experts working in areas relevant to the technical, organisational and ecological areas of interest that emerged through the literature review and discussions with the project team. This included people with expertise in: organisational development and policy in the regions, algae technology, microbial ecology, wastewater operations and the agribusiness sector. The research insights identified through the interviewing process were synthesised in combination with contextual research, schematised as part of the visualisation process and refined into key factors open to configuration in future transitions.

Interview participants are listed at the end of this report.

Visualisation workshops and design
Visualisation has a range of benefits in future visioning for sustainable transitions. As noted by Gaziulusoy and Ryan (2017), visualisations can be useful in multi-stakeholder workshop settings intended to facilitate discussion and illuminate impediments to thinking beyond existing frames of reference for future change. Visualisations can serve an illustrative purpose to bring a level of tangibility to otherwise abstract or esoteric discussions. Visualisations are also used by researchers and experts in a range of industries and disciplines as tools for working things out and planning (Mills 1960). Particular kinds of visualisations, like concept maps and diagrams, are used to synthesise information and express schematised relationships (Kolko 2010; Mintzberg 2005).

The visualisation workshops and design were focused in particular on addressing Aim 2 (Conceptualise and communicate existing and potential stakeholder, system and decision dynamics). The understanding acquired through the visualisation process also contributed more broadly to the focus and conceptualisation of the research.

The visualisations present a snapshot in time in an assumed growth-oriented transition pathway in line with the scope of our research. They are guided by plausible characteristics directly related to transitions to a future bioeconomy, rather than depicting extreme or contrasting alternatives. The visualisations feature four interlinked segments of a potential regional bioeconomy in bioplastic production and design: farm suppliers, industrial food processing, community wastewater treatment, and the regional community. The segments are housed within the same projected transition pathway, with a relatively low level of deviation from each other. The schematised relationships shown in visuals are intended to offer high levels of immediate and conceptual legibility to stakeholders.

As with the aims of our research more broadly, the visualisations are intended to impact and engage a mix of external and internal decision makers. They are not intended to predict or anticipate changes but to describe and aid in decision making.



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