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Heli Nissilä
Postdoctoral Researcher
Person profile
I study the emergence of technology- and sustainability driven industries and markets from an organization and management theory perspective. I am currently managing a three-year research project with the title “Integrating social value into business goals: Impact Investing as an emerging market category”, funded by the Marcus Wallenberg Foundation. In my other empirical projects I have explored industry emergence in new renewable energy technologies, especially solar energy. I am also engaged in the Academy of Finland research project on the transitioning of Quantum Computing from labs to markets.
I conduct qualitative empirical research and have addressed the topic of industry emergence from different perspectives, including the role of field-configuring events and technological experiments, how actors construct visions and expectation in new fields, and how time perceptions are constructed in a complex multi-actor setting, in the context of nascent fields.
You can find me on Google Scholar:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=fi&user=5D...
Publications and selected conference proceedings:
Nissilä, Heli 2020. Pursuing legitimacy for solar energy: essays on temporality and collective spaces in nascent fields. PhD thesis. https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/43277.
Nissilä, Granqvist, Holopainen, Rajala 2019. When the Time Never Comes: Temporality and Legitimacy in a Nascent Field. Academy of Management Proceedings. 2019(1).
Granqvist, Kallio, Nissilä 2017. Doing qualitative research on emerging fields and markets. Routledge Companion to Qualitative Research in Organization Studies. Ed. Mir, Raza & Jain, Sanjay. Routledge.
Heiskanen, Nissilä, Tainio 2017. Promoting Residential Renewable Energy via Peer-to-Peer Learning. Applied Environmental Education and Communication.
Jalas, Heiskanen, Juntunen, Nissilä 2017. Small streams, diverse sources: Who invests in renewable energy in Finland. Energy Policy.
Jalas, Heiskanen, Lovio, Hyysalo, Nissinen, Mattinen, Rinkinen, Juntunen, Tainio, Nissilä 2017. Everyday experimentation in energy transition: A practice-theoretical view. Journal of Cleaner Production. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.03.034
Heiskanen, Nissilä, Lovio, 2015. Building Demonstration Projects as Sustainable Niches for New Technology: Solar-Building Integration in Finland. Journal of Cleaner Production, December 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.04.090
Nissilä, 2015. Conferences as Sequential Arenas for Creating New Sustainable Fields. Industry and Innovation, 22 (1): 209-228.
Nissilä, Lempiälä, Lovio 2014. Constructing Expectations for Solar Technology over Multiple Field-Configuring Events: a Narrative Perspective. Science and Technology Studies Journal, April 2014.
Nissilä, Heli & Lovio, Raimo 2011. Ilmastonmuutoksen hillitseminen liiketoiminnan muutosvoimana. [Climate Change Mitigation as a Driver of Business Renewal]. In Vastuullinen liiketoiminta kansainvälisessä maailmassa [Sustainable Business in a Changing World]. Ed. Joutsenvirta, M. et al. Gaudeamus, Helsinki 2011.
For further information on ongoing and past projects, research output and affiliations:
https://www.aalto.fi/en/department-of-management-s...
https://www.aalto.fi/en/department-of-management-s...
http://laica.fi/laica-in-english/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Heli_Nissilae/contributions
Person profile
My research focuses on the emergence of new markets and industries – in particular legitimation at the intersection of different communities that pertain to a rising field. In this I draw from extensive qualitative data sets and address the topic from different perspectives, such as temporality and time perceptions in field emergence and the role of “collective spaces”, that connect disparate actors to one another, in legitimation. I take special interest in empirical settings related to sustainability in business, in particular renewable energy and in technological transitions towards novel sustainable solutions.
In my dissertation I conduct an extensive and in part real-time empirical study on solar energy in the North, based on a very vast qualitative data set that covers 35 years of developments in this domain. My focus is on local initiatives seeking to legitimate the technology, such as demonstration projects and technology programs, and how businesses, scientists and other stakeholders conjointly negotiate legitimacy in these settings. As a novel contribution to extant research, I craft a temporal perspective towards understanding technological change and technology legitimacy.
Publications and selected conference proceedings:
Granqvist, Kallio, Nissilä 2017. Doing qualitative research on emerging fields and markets. Routledge Companion to Qualitative Research in Organization Studies. Ed. Mir, Raza & Jain, Sanjay. Routledge.
Heiskanen, Nissilä, Tainio 2017. Promoting Residential Renewable Energy via Peer-to-Peer Learning. Applied Environmental Education and Communication.
Jalas, Heiskanen, Juntunen, Nissilä 2017. Small streams, diverse sources: Who invests in renewable energy in Finland. Energy Policy.
Jalas, Heiskanen, Lovio, Hyysalo, Nissinen, Mattinen, Rinkinen, Juntunen, Tainio, Nissilä 2017. Everyday experimentation in energy transition: A practice-theoretical view. Journal of Cleaner Production. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.03.034
Nissilä, Granqvist, Holopainen, Rajala 2016. Solar energy in the North: Temporality and the dynamics of illegitimacy in a nascent field. European Group for Organization Studies Colloquium, July 2016, Naples, Italy.
Heiskanen, Nissilä, Lovio, 2015. Building Demonstration Projects as Sustainable Niches for New Technology: Solar-Building Integration in Finland. Journal of Cleaner Production, December 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.04.090
Nissilä, 2015. Conferences as Sequential Arenas for Creating New Sustainable Fields. Industry and Innovation, 22 (1): 209-228.
Nissilä, Lempiälä, Lovio 2014. Constructing Expectations for Solar Technology over Multiple Field-Configuring Events: a Narrative Perspective. Science and Technology Studies Journal, April 2014.
Nissilä, Heli & Lovio, Raimo 2011. Ilmastonmuutoksen hillitseminen liiketoiminnan muutosvoimana. [Climate Change Mitigation as a Driver of Business Renewal]. In Vastuullinen liiketoiminta kansainvälisessä maailmassa [Sustainable Business in a Changing World]. Ed. Joutsenvirta, M. et al. Gaudeamus, Helsinki 2011.
For further information on past projects, research output and affiliations:
http://laica.fi/laica-in-english/
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Heli_Nissilae/contributions