Great importance is attributed to a transition towards a bioeconomy regime. The bioeconomy can foster more sustainable production and consumption systems and therefore contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. This transition is facing several inhibitors, such as dysfunctional communication between different actors and insufficient innovative activity. Scholars and practitioners consider coupling technological developments between the bioeconomy and the digital economy as a driving-force to accelerate the transition towards a bioeconomy and bring solutions to major inhibitors. In this paper, we therefore seek to better understand how and if the bioeconomy and the digital economy converge to create the needed momentum and capture the full potential. Whereas the increasing number of scientific papers highlight benefits of digital technologies for the bioeconomy, our analyses of merger and acquisitions reveal tendencies of an initial blurring of boundaries between both, bioeconomy and digital economy market boundaries. Still, bioeconomy companies acquire digital companies to a greater extend indicating high benefit of implementing digital technologies within the bioeconomy. Our results contribute to the extant body of convergence research by implementing convergence indicators in a new case study as well as coupling transition theory and convergence literature. Both literature bodies support the better understanding of the transition towards a knowledge-based digital economy as transition theory describes the path to a new digital bioeconomy regime created by cross-sectoral convergence.

中文翻译：

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向数字化生物经济融合——探索生物经济与数字经济之间的跨行业并购活动

向生物经济体制的过渡非常重要。生物经济可以促进更可持续的生产和消费系统，从而有助于实现联合国可持续发展目标。这种转变面临着一些障碍，例如不同参与者之间的沟通不畅和创新活动不足。学者和实践者将生物经济和数字经济之间的技术发展耦合视为加速向生物经济转型并为主要抑制因素提供解决方案的驱动力。因此，在本文中，我们试图更好地了解生物经济和数字经济如何以及是否会融合以创造所需的动力并充分发挥潜力。尽管越来越多的科学论文强调了数字技术对生物经济的好处，但我们对并购的分析揭示了生物经济和数字经济市场边界之间最初模糊界限的趋势。尽管如此，生物经济公司在更大程度上收购了数字公司，这表明在生物经济中实施数字技术具有很高的收益。通过在新案例研究中实施收敛指标以及耦合过渡理论和收敛文献，我们的结果有助于收敛研究的现存主体。两个文献机构都支持更好地理解向以知识为基础的数字经济的过渡，因为过渡理论描述了通向由跨部门融合创建的新数字生物经济制度的道路。