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A. Toppinen et al. / Futures 88 (2017) 1 – 14
[(Fig._3)TD$FIG]
Fig. 3. The predicted change in production technology by 2030 [50_TD$DIFF] and the signi fi cance of the change to the business.
technology and known technical solutions cope with. The responses ranged from 12 to 75 percent, the average being 50 percent. The ambivalence among the groups demonstrates high uncertainty regarding the future of the sector. According to the panelists, in addition to the traditional PPI products (pulp, paper, board, packaging, and tissue), the main sources of revenue in 2030 would include energy, biofuel, composites, bio-chemicals and bio-materials, paper and packaging products with intelligent properties, and fi ber-based innovations. As main drivers of competitiveness they referred especially to energy and material ef fi ciency, sustainability, and new innovations in processes and products that meet speci fi c customer needs. Next we asked about potential sources of value creation concerning raw material, technology, new markets, and new partners and industrial sectors. None of the areas was especially emphasized in the responses, indicating that the experts did not expect all the actors to follow similar paths in the search for future competitiveness. They varied widely in their perceptions of future business opportunities, re fl ecting expected further fragmentation within the industry. Examples of opportunities included fi nding new uses for re-modeled and non-wood fi bers, advanced biore fi neries, new process techniques, and collaboration with the chemical, food and textile industries.
4.3. Expected changes in the key factors by 2030, and the assessed signi fi cance of the changes to the business
In the third round we asked the respondents to assess from the overall industry ’ s perspective how much the different factors production technology, raw-material base, products, markets, sustainability investments, strategic partners, and specialization would change by 2030, and how signi fi cant these changes would be for the business. For example, as regards the production technology, the respondents were asked to assess how much the production technology will change until 2030 on a scale from zero ( “ nochange ” ) toten( “ substantial change ” ). Second, they were also asked to assess the signi fi cance of the change to business on a scale from zero ( “ not signi fi cant ” ) toten( “ verysigni fi cant ” ). Thus, our aim was to study what kind of changes are expected within the industry until 2030. And with the second question (signi fi cance of the change to business) our objective was to discern whether these changes have small or signi fi cant impact to the business. Overall, the panelists predicted change in all of the listed factors, on average, ranging from four to seven on the scale, whereas the scores concerning the signi fi cance of these changes to the business ranged from six to eight. Next we describe these results in more detail. Intermsof production technology (Fig. 3) the perceptions of the experts are quite dispersed. The industry experts showed most consistency, whereas the opinions of the representatives of industry associations and other experts were the most divergent 1 . Overall, all of the respondent groups foresaw a moderate change in production technology (average 4.8). The industry experts were the most consistent in predicting moderate change, whereas the representatives of industry associations and other experts expected the biggest changes. All the groups were in agreement in assessing the signi fi cance of change in production technology as very high (average 6.4). The respondents ’ opinions concerning the raw-material base (Fig. 4) diverged heavily. The industry experts predicted quite a minor change (average 2.6), whereas the opinions of the other groups were more diverse. One possible explanation for the divergence in opinions about both the change and its signi fi cance could be that the experts interpreted this question rather differently. The industry experts seemed to think that the raw material itself would not change very much, but that the changes that would be realized in terms of availability, usability, quality, and price would be important to the business (average 6.7). However, some experts from the other two groups rated the signi fi cance of the change quite low, which may re fl ect the belief that the value (what and how) created from the raw material matters more [75_TD$DIFF] than what it consists of. However, more than half of these experts also thought that the raw-material base would change somewhat. The responses to
1 In Figs. 3 – 9, the big bubbles represent the average mean values of each expert group whereas the small bubbles mark individual answers of the respondents.
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