Chiefly comprised of European and North American companies, the natural
products industry mostly sources natural products from plants, algae and
fish. Plants and algae are either collected from the wild in rural areas
of Africa, Asia and Latin America or purposefully grown. The active
ingredients are then extracted and isolated as standardized extracts in
dedicated plants based in France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Spain,
USA and Canada and then sold to a number of different industries for
their pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmetic and health applications.
For comparison, in 2009 the industry, including the key sub-sectors of
food and beverages, cosmetics, herbal medicines and pharmaceuticals, had
$65 billion revenues.26
2.5 Managing the innovation process
Studying the literature on technology and innovation management in
bioeconomy companies and building on a previous study of Golembiewski
and co-workers,21 van Lancker and co-workers in 2016
identified five main factors driving the innovation process in the
bioeconomy (Table 1), suggesting that an open innovation approach
naturally fits the bioeconomy.27
Table 1 . Five main factors and requiriments affecting the
implementation and management of innovation development processes in
bioeconomy companies according to van Lancker et al. (Adapted from
Ref.27, with kind permission)