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Value Creation and Innovation with Non-wood Forest Products in a Family Forestry Context

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Services in Family Forestry

Part of the book series: World Forests ((WFSE,volume 24))

Abstract

Non-wood forest products (NWFPs) have often-underestimated economic potential, particularly for family forest owners. Their role and value, however, is changing in the global West and so are the business opportunities and innovation needs associated with them. Focusing on industrialized countries, this chapter gives an overview of the broad range of goods and services connected with NWFPs, describing important innovation trends. In the core of the chapter, a number of case study analyses from Europe and North America illustrate the various ways NWFPs sourced through wild collection or specialized management systems can be utilized by family forest owners . We analyze the actor networks, value creation processes, and role of services for supporting such systems. While recognizing the importance of non-market values from NWFPs, our primary emphases are on business and income potential for family forestry. We conclude that the application of a service-dominant logic is helpful for understanding how new goods and services are developed by forest owners in networks of various kinds of public and private actors and within specific institutional and cultural contexts. From the analysis we also derive recommendations on how service providersand policy measures can purposefully support innovations in NWFPs in a family forestry context.

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Acknowledgements

Parts of this research was undertaken within the European research project StarTree “Multipurpose trees and non-wood forest products: a challenge and opportunity” and has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration under grant agreement No. 311919. We want to thank the book editors, two anonymous reviewers and our colleagues Julia Jungmair, Alice Ludvig and Davide Pettenella for very helpful comments and suggestions. We furthermore want to acknowledge the great help from Ivana Živojinović with the figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences & European Forest Institute, Vienna, Austria

    Gerhard Weiss

  2. USDA, Forest Service, Burlington, VT, USA

    Marla R. Emery

  3. Natural Resources Institute Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Jari Miina & Mikko Kurttila

  4. University of Padova, Legnaro, Italy

    Giulia Corradini

  5. University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria

    Patrick Huber & Harald Vacik

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  1. Gerhard Weiss
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  2. Marla R. Emery
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  7. Harald Vacik
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Correspondence to Gerhard Weiss .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Forest Sciences, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, Finland

    Teppo Hujala

  2. Forest Sciences, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Anne Toppinen

  3. United States Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Amherst, MA, USA

    Brett J. Butler

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Weiss, G. et al. (2019). Value Creation and Innovation with Non-wood Forest Products in a Family Forestry Context. In: Hujala, T., Toppinen, A., J. Butler, B. (eds) Services in Family Forestry. World Forests, vol 24. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28999-7_10

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