Industrial Symbiosis to Circular Economy: What Does the Literature Reveal for a Successful Complex Industrial Area?

We observe that some industrial areas thrive, whilst others under-perform, and that the competitive potential of an enterprise located within an industrial area is impacted by a range of non-apparent characteristics related to the particular location. A dynamic industrial area is a better place for an industrial enterprise to be located than one that on the face of it seems lack-lustre—the ‘dynamism’ of the industrial area seems not that well understood or described. The goal of the literature review was to determine to what extent researchers have gone beyond the traditional view that industrial symbiosis (IS) is singularly focused on the symbiotic relationships that are responsible for the beneficial outcomes associated with product, by-product, and utility exchanges. We attempted to expose other forms of symbiotic relationships that might also contribute to the improved economic outcomes of companies located within complex industrial areas. Our findings confirm there are additional interacting factors contributing to the relative success (dynamism) of a given complex industrial area. We posit that an industrial area will exhibit varying degrees of success or failure, depending on the extent to which its creators have given thought to how it will operate to contribute to the international competitive advantages of its industrial inhabitants. We identified four contributing factors that contribute to this dynamism, and these align with an emerging four-dimensional framework for IS which the author is describing as the KIC4 dimensions of industrial symbiosis.