Research and development of ’new species’ in Norwegian aquaculture

Abstract

Because of salmon farming, Norwegian aquaculture today is a remarkable economic success. The success is partly explained by aquaculture research of high international quality. However, this salmon farming research overshadows how research and industry interact to create growth. The focus of this article is on the reciprocity of the system that produces fish and shellfish and the system that produces research. The research is organized as a comparison of salmon farming with four other initiatives within Norwegian aquaculture that represent enterprises with various initial problems. While research tend to be oriented towards one-factor explanations, industrial development will include immaterial considerations as trust (do we believe in this?), risk acceptance (do we believe sufficiently in this to risk our own money?), knowledge (do we have complete understanding about how these things work?), path of development (do colleagues that believe in the same as us, exist?), values (is this the enterprise we wanted to be part of?). The institutional environment, which gives new enterprises content and meaning, existed for salmon farming when the enterprise was new. The (so-called) new initiatives basically lack this institutional context. The imagery of salmon farming still dominates the arena. In order for aquaculture research to contribute to qualitatively new industrial development, the research must take place in relation to real activity where actors with a common goal in sight use the research results. The main conclusion is that the role of research and knowledge production in industrial development is not sufficiently problematised.