I’m Matti William Karinen, a doctoral researcher at Turku School of Economics – University of Turku, Finland. I’m based at the entrepreneurship unit although my research is more related to legitimacy of sustainable agriculture and other basic industries. My doctoral project explores legitimacy dynamics in sustainable Palm Oil using a longitudinal process research approach.
I’m also a co-founder of AutoSawit Technology Oy, a start-up developing technology to automate Oil Palm harvesting. Despite over 35 years of effort, oil palm harvesting has yet to be mechanized. This has had negative implications for biodiversity and forest cover particularly in Indonesia, because there was no effective alternative to expanding planted area to meet increasing demand. Oil Palm agriculture is a multi-billion dollar sector reliant on increasingly scarce manual labor. It does not need to be, and fixing that can make it more sustainable too.
My University of Turku profile with contact info and publications can be found here