Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Transitions: Ocean-Based Bioeconomy in the Seaweed Sector

Aquaculture has been becoming an important topic globally for promoting a pathway to sustainable development. The promise and the potential of ocean-based innovations can significantly impact ocean conservation, reduce the use of harmful materials such as plastics, reduce CO2 levels, and promote community engagement and economic development (European Commission, 2023). Given this context, our study lies at the nexus of sustainable entrepreneurship, bioeconomy and sustainability transitions. The study unpacks the role of sustainable entrepreneur’s activities and understands how they navigate the biological, technological and market-oriented matrices in driving sustainability transition processes. It specifically looks at the seaweed sector and entrepreneurs based in this peculiar sector to understand how they mobilize and enable systemic sustainability transitions. We conduct a qualitative study to better understand the interactions across technology emergence, biological attributes and business potential for seaweed entrepreneurs. The data consists of interviews with 25 seaweed entrepreneurs across Europe and the United States of America. Our study sheds light on improving the understanding of the complexities in the sector. Given the niche, regime and landscape-level challenges, we uncover the processes through which sustainable entrepreneurs navigate and establish their ventures. Our study sheds light on understanding the holistic background of the seaweed sector, its challenges and promises to create sustainable business ventures. We contribute to the literature on sustainable entrepreneurship, bioeconomy and sustainability transitions. In terms of practical implications, our study demonstrates the key challenges faced by entrepreneurs despite the wider movement and goals at the policy level. Our findings thus inform practice, promote collective learning for entrepreneurs and would likely have implications for policy.