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Table6. Cont.
Type of Innovation
Example from NWFPs
Experiential services such as foraging or mushroom collection tours, wild fruits cooking courses or manufacturing workshops. Bottom-up initiatives with NWFPSs by people and volunteering organizations Changing lifestyles —close to nature, new practices such as foraging and bush craft activities, survival training or the rediscovery of old skills and traditions; the redefinition of traditional wild food products from being seen as a poor people’s food to a healthy and stylish gourmet food. This list of possible innovations (Table 6) suggests many possibilities in which forests could be used in the bioeconomy. This is especially important if we take into account the high share of privately owned forests and many small, in some cases abandoned and unmanaged, properties [71,72]. For small forest owners who do not see interest in managing forests for timber, this diversity of options for developing various businesses with NWFPs could be of relevance. As suggested by Weiss et al. [46] forest owners have a key role to play in the future forest-based bioeconomy. Thus, future strategies and policies should address the different ownership types by combining policy instruments, including information, incentives and legal and institutional frameworks [46]. Furthermore, if we look at the justice aspects, the use of NWFPs is for some people, a source of food and is important for living, thus it would be purposeful to adapt forest management for these different purposes. Here attention should be placed on assuring sustainable production of NWFPs, especially when it comes to expansion of production and intensively cultivated NWFPs. Intensively cultivated NWFPs were not focus of this paper, but potential of NWFPs would be even higher if these are considered. Transitioning to the bioeconomy is a matter of many small steps, some of which are more evident than others [29]. It assumes a shift away from the prevailing rules of the game, expectations, cultures, and consumer behaviour. It will need changes in many spheres, which demands not just for disruptive or radical but also a magnitude of incremental innovations. It is this multitude of mutually reinforcing and simultaneously evolving changes that form the essence of transitions, which is first and foremost a challenge of innovation on the institutional level [29]. In this paper, we showed how these different innovation types, many of them incre- mental and niche innovations, in the sphere of NWFPs could contribute to the overall bioeconomy transition process. However, for this, many identified barriers in the IS need to be tackled. Unlocking the NWFP Potential in Bioeconomy by Improving Innovation Support Structures The institutional frameworks for supporting innovations in forestry in general, and for NWFP specifically, are relatively weak [73,74]. Since the field of NWFP is not developed as a distinguished sector, specific support structures on the public and private sides are largely missing [47]. From the public side, statistical data or any other information, research, education, and training services are very limited. From the private side, only weak support exists, since the established interest groups of forestry or agriculture do not have NWFP in their focus (except for some specific products, for example game). Forest owners’ interest groups tend not to support those products because the benefits are often not with the landowners [46]. Only rarely, have specific interest groups been founded for NWFP as such or for a range of such products. An example would be the Scottish Wild Harvests Association. Interest groups for specific NWFP usually develop only once a certain economic significance is recognized and reached (e.g., for truffles or cork in Mediterranean countries). The formation of producers’ associations is often an important step for fostering the production knowhow, spreading product knowledge to consumers, or lobbying for favorable regulatory provisions.
Service innovation
Social innovation
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