Does maritime mindset facilitate the processes of industrial symbiosis (IS) in port city regions?

Private and public actors encounter difficulties in implementing the technological and organisational design of industrial ecology (IE) due to its complex nature. In some cases, IE is even regarded as the basis of the circular economy. IS is a sub-area of IE that focuses on the study of industrial networks in which resources are shared and valorised. IS is an outstanding concept in industrial ecology that focuses on networks of actors and consists of disparate units that share and valorise unused resources such as materials, energy, information, services or technologies in order to increase the circularity of the industrial system. IS engages “traditionally separate industries in a collective approach to competitive advantage involving physical exchange of materials, energy, water and by-products. The keys to industrial symbiosis are collaboration and the synergistic possibilities offered by geographic proximity”. Opinions differ among researchers on the need for geographical proximity for industrial symbiosis to succeed: it is ‘neither necessary nor sufficient’ to IS, which extends the perimeter of IS to non-physical flows such as information, knowledge, technologies and services. Two models of industrial symbiosis exist: the self-organized industrial symbiosis model and the planned industrial symbiosis model. The obstacles to the implementation of IS are the lack of exchange of information between actors, the lack of cooperation and trust between actors and the lack of awareness among local communities. The ports are the place with the highest concentration of chemical, fuel and energy production facilities, a strategic area for energy supply, many times with a decive (petro)chemical sector and a focal point for the development of IS, as a large number of objects from different industrial sectors are concentrated here. Social and institutional pressure on ports to reduce their environmental impact is increasing, as is the possible depletion of some resources. Collective maritime thinking (we all belong to the port, the port belongs to us), typically developed in port city regions and increasing identification with port development and port processes, could reduce the above-mentioned obstacles to IS implementation. Typically, local actors could act to create local physical and governmental conditions that favour the emergence and further development of IS in a particular regional industrial system. To test this premise, the following questions must be answered: What is maritime mindset? How is it structured? Is maritime mindset something that refers to a particular employment or social structure? Does maritime mindset influence the actors in the IS business models? Does the maritime mindset build cooperation between actors, increase their trust and enable better communication? Is maritime mindset a value that has evolved from the past into the future? The aim of the paper is to show that social and cultural links between actors (citizens, stakeholders, employees, owners, etc.) have an important influence on such complex systems as port cities and technological innovations such as IS.