Maria Tønnessen Frivold

Universitetslektor Handelshøyskolen ved UiA

E-post: maria.tonnessen@uia.no
Telefon: +47 38 14 19 94
Kontor: C4064 (Jon Lilletuns vei 9, 4879 Grimstad, Norway)

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Bakgrunn og erfaring

Trainee i Trainee Sør i perioden sept. 2019 til nov. 2020. Trainee Sør er et regionalt traineeprogram som skal styrke Sørlandets konkurranseevne. Programmet varer i 18 mnd hvor man er innom tre virksomheter, i både privat og offentlig sektor, hvor hver periode varer i seks mnd. Første plassering var i Grimstad kommune hvor jeg jobbet med næringsutvikling i næringsavdelingen. I de neste plasseringene var jeg på Universitet i Agder og i ledelsens stab hvor jeg jobbet med strategi og prosjektledelse.
Praktikant i Agder Energi sommeren 2019 hvor jeg som del av et team så på muligheter i fremtidens kraftsystem innen lagring av energi.

Ansvarsområder

Maria jobber som stipendiat og er tilknyttet institutt for arbeidsliv og innovasjon. I avhandlingen skal hun forske på hvordan transformasjon av innovasjonssystemer kan bidra til å løse store samfunnsutfordringer. Veileder er professor Arne Isaksen.

Forskningen er sentrert rundt regional innovasjon, økonomisk geografi og regional næringsutvikling. Hennes interesser omhandler spesielt temaer som hvorfor næringer i noen regioner gjør det bedre enn i andre regioner, og hvilke faktorer som spiller inn i dette. I sin siste artikkel forsket hun og medforfatter Maren Songe Eriksen på å utvide forståelsen av barrierer for regional næringsutvikling ved å fokusere på bruk og modifisering av regionale ressurser.

Maria er medlem i forskningssenteret RIST (Research centre for studies of innovation for sustainable transition) på UiA. Hun har deltatt i forskningsprosjektet «Regional Resilience and Sustainable Industrial Restructuring» med formål om å kartlegge og forklare den ujevne økonomiske motstandsdyktigheten mot Covid-19-krisen i næringer og regioner. I tillegg er hun en del av NORSI, Nordic Research School in Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Ved siden av forskningen har hun vært foreleser på masterstudiet i innovasjon og kunnskapsutvikling i emnene ORG 503 Samskaping og innovasjon i offentlig sektor og SV-411 Institusjonell økonomi.

Hun har en master i innovasjon og kunnskapsutvikling fra UiA og har tidligere jobbet i Agder Energi med forretningsutvikling og i Trainee Sør hvor hun jobbet med næringsutvikling i Grimstad kommune samt strategi og prosjektledelse på Universitetet i Agder.

Undervisning

ORG 503 Samskaping og innovasjon i offentlig sektor

Forskningsgrupper

RIST – Research on Industrial and Societal Transformations

Adhikar, Purushottam; Frivold, Maria Tønnessen; Martin, Roman & Rypestøl, Jan Ole (2026). Exploring agency–structure dynamics in green path development: evidence from the emerging battery industries in Arendal and Gothenburg. Industry and Innovation. ISSN 1366-2716. doi: 10.1080/13662716.2026.2662850. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag
The paper investigates agency – structure dynamics in green regional industrial path development in contrasting regional innovation systems (RISs). Empirically, the article draws from the emerging battery industries in the thick and diversified RIS of Gothenburg, Sweden, and the thick and specialised RIS of Arendal, Norway. Following a path tracing method, the paper highlights how Volvo Cars played a key role in initiating a battery partnership with Northvolt in Gothenburg. In contrast, the emergence of the battery industry in Arendal relied more on system-level agency and institutional support. Furthermore, the article demonstrates that the distinction between firm- and system-level agency in green path development processes may be blurry. Actors at both levels sometimes merged their actions and pursued shared objectives from a unified platform. We call this merger of firm- and system-level agency ‘coalition agency’ and identify it as a key driver of green path development in the two cases.
Frivold, Maria Tønnessen & Rypestøl, Jan Ole (2025). Asset sourcing dynamics for green industry path development. European Planning Studies. ISSN 0965-4313. 33, s. 1956–1974. doi: 10.1080/09654313.2025.2535460. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag
This research article examines asset sourcing dynamics and how the geography of asset sourcing influences green regional industrial restructuring. Empirically, the article considers how access to regional assets influences the green restructuring of the regional innovation system in the Agder region of southern Norway and discusses the role of geography in the unfolding of such processes in both emerging and mature industries. Based on 36 interviews, the study determines that the region is the most important geographical level for asset sourcing activities designed to promote green industrial restructuring. Furthermore, the article reveals that access to regional assets is most important for supporting the least radical regional green industrial path developments, while more radical mechanisms rely less on the regional level. Finally, the article suggests that asset sourcing for green restructuring is most intense in firms belonging to emerging industries, while firms in mature industries less actively source assets to restructure.
Andersen, Elfi Fei-Yin Peniche; Frivold, Maria Tønnessen; Örtenblad, Anders; Rypestøl, Jan Ole & Eriksen, Maren Songe (2025). For å lykkes med praksis i utdanningen behøver man noe mer enn bare en oppskriftsbok. I Örtenblad, Anders & Rypestøl, Jan Ole (Red.), Praksisorientert og studentaktiv læring: Arbeidslivsrelevans og akademiske verdier i høyere utdanning. Cappelen Damm Akademisk. ISSN 9788202870478. s. 95–136. doi: 10.23865/cdf.244.ch5. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag
The significance of experiential learning as a pedagogical method to enhance educational quality and prepare students for the workforce is discussed in this chapter. Experiential learning involves transforming practical experiences into applicable knowledge. The authors have identified and analyzed what previous literature highlights as necessities for successful experiential learning and have categorized the recommendations into eight success factors: admission, information, structure, the teaching situation, the experience, reflection, the instructor, and the student. We discuss these success factors in light of empirical data from various practical situations in educational contexts and find that some success factors, particularly the role of the instructor and student engagement, are more crucial than others. Sometimes, learning processes can succeed without all success factors being present, and conversely, some learning processes can fail even if all factors are present. The importance of the different success factors is context dependent. Furthermore, the significance of timing is discussed, and how the right timing can have a significant impact on the success of experiential learning processes. We therefore introduce a ninth success factor for experiential learning: timing.
Eriksen, Maren Songe & Tønnessen, Maria (2023). Barriers to regional industrial development: An analysis of two specialised industrial regions in Norway. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift. ISSN 0029-1951. 77(1), s. 21–34. doi: 10.1080/00291951.2023.2192225. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag
The article aims to broaden the understanding of barriers to regional industrial development by focusing on the use and modification of the regional asset base. The authors employ Maskell & Malmberg’s categorisation of assets and they regard asset modification through change agency as a vital part of regional industrial development. They aim both to complement Grabher’s ‘lock-in’ approach and to provide a wider understanding of how barriers can be lowered through their empirical investigation of two specialised regions in Norway, Stavanger and Grenland. The authors address three research questions: What are historically created key regional assets in the two specialised regions? Do the assets function as support or barriers to green path development? If they are barriers, what are key agencies for lowering them? The findings demonstrate that the regional asset base functions both as support and as a barrier. To lower the barriers, both asset reuse and asset creation are deployed by actors in the region. The authors conclude that the article’s two main contributions are that with regard to the regional asset base, a relevant framework can identify possible barriers to regional industrial development, and the finding that barriers can be lowered through asset modification.
Kyllingstad, Nina; Rypestøl, Jan Ole; Schulze-Krogh, Ann Camilla & Tønnessen, Maria (2021). Asset modification for regional industrial restructuring: digitalization of the culture and experience industry and the healthcare sector. Regional studies. ISSN 0034-3404. 55(10-11), s. 1764–1774. doi: 10.1080/00343404.2021.1878126. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag
This paper researches how firm- and system-level asset modification and alignment underpin and direct new path development from digitalization. It suggests that asset reuse mostly promotes path extension or path upgrading, while asset creation and asset destruction will be more evident in the process of path emergence. The empirics support asset modification as a key mechanism for regional restructuring from digitalization, but suggest that the typology should be more nuanced. Specifically, the empirics demonstrate asset upgrading as a key mechanism.

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Frivold, Maria Tønnessen (2026). Conditions for Green Regional Industrial Restructuring. Universitetet i Agder. ISSN 9788284273204. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag
Green regional industrial restructuring places new demands on how regional economies organise, learn, and adapt in response to grand societal challenges. Green restructuring unfolds both as reorientations within established industries and as the emergence of new activities, which together require clearer accounts of the conditions that make change feasible, the pace at which it can proceed, and the directions in which it is likely to move. The regional innovation system (RIS) approach underscores the importance of regional contexts in shaping how knowledge and innovation are developed and used, and thus how industrial restructuring is enabled or constrained. Within evolutionary economic geography (EEG), RIS is an established framework for analysing why innovation and industrial change unfold unevenly across different regional contexts. Nevertheless, important research gaps remain. The extant literature often underspecifies which assets matter and at what scales; it tends to present assets mainly as enablers without considering how they may also operate as barriers; and it provides limited guidance on how culture shapes green restructuring. A refined RIS approach is therefore needed to show how assets constitute conditions for action, and how actors – through different forms of agency – modify assets within and beyond the region. This thesis addresses these research gaps and introduces novel research aimed at illuminating the processes of green regional industrial restructuring. Consequently, the overall aim of the thesis is to examine how the RIS approach can be refined to better explain how regional asset bases and different forms of agency condition green industrial restructuring. The thesis contributes to the extant literature by clarifying how regional asset bases, together with access to extra-regional assets, set conditions for actions in green industrial restructuring. It indicates that assets and asset constellations can function both as enablers and as barriers to green restructuring. Culture is brought into this perspective through cultural (mis)alignment, highlighting how cultural modification processes can influence the feasibility, pace, and direction of change. The thesis further contributes to our understanding of agency by outlining how firm- and system-level actors shape green restructuring across the phases of green regional industrial path development. It points to configurations in which system-level agency develops alongside firm initiatives, as well as to cases in which existing system-level arrangements persist while firms seek change. The thesis also introduces coalition agency as coordinated actions around shared objectives with complementary motivations, suggesting that such arrangements can be particularly relevant at critical junctures and may take different forms across contrasting RIS types. The thesis’s research design is inspired by critical realism, and the empirical evidence draws on a rich set of triangulations. The empirical cases are from several regional innovation systems in Norway and one in Sweden. This thesis comprises four articles and this kappa (synthesis). The four articles are separate contributions, either published in peer-reviewed journals or currently under review. They examine processes of green regional industrial restructuring, with a focus on the role of assets and agency in such processes. The purpose of the kappa is to present the overall theoretical and analytical framework, along with the methodological foundation that informs the thesis. Furthermore, the kappa presents the overall findings, answers the thesis’s research questions, and draws conclusions.

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Publisert 16. apr. 2024 11:09