Since the early seventies, mankind started to realize that there are limits to growth as underlined by the Club of Rome (Meadows et al., 1972), just preceded by the publication of the entropy law and economic process (Georgescu-Roegen, 1971). This was also the period in which the Earth Overshoot Day was established, marking the date when humanity would exhaust its nature’s budget for the year: a detrimental evolution to food security. This date is the 2^nd of August 2023 (Footprintnetwork, 2023). These alarming data may have triggered the Brundtland committee to publish its report on sustainable development in 1987 (WCED, 1987), followed by the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) at the global level (UN, 2015) and the Green Deal in Europe (EC, 2019). These political ambitions are debated and the focus of today’s main concern about how to transform our systems. This includes changing food systems – describing interconnected systems and processes that influence food security, community development, and agriculture –, in such a way that the outcomes will be sustainable, which means that they will not negatively impact on future generations (WCED, 1987; Ericksen, 2008; Herrero et al., 2020). Globally, the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021, whose procedural justice has been questioned (Tanzer et al., 2022), pleaded for change via participatory trajectories (UN FSS, 2021). European Union’s institutions and political entities are also among those at the forefront of such pledges, as shown in different ambitious policy strategies expressing political willingness to promote transitions towards sustainable food systems (EC, 2020; SAPEA, 2020; Bock et al., 2022; Miles and Hoy, 2023; SCAR, 2023).

Today, the major challenge for agrifood systems is to increase their positive and decrease their negative impacts on the environment, societies, and economies. On one hand, agrifood systems are capturing CO₂, recycling organic matter, potentially connecting production and ecology, and maintaining diversity in resources, activities, actors, and their preferences as well as cultural heritage (Gascuel-Odoux et al., 2022; SCAR, 2023). On the other hand, they contribute to greenhouse gas emissions (IPCC, 2023), inefficient usage of resources (UNEP, 2016), mass and over-consumption in fulfilling personal preferences (Wind and Rangaswamy, 2001) food insecurity, and unhealthy diets (Willett et al., 2019). Since the 1970s, agri-food systems have lost their balancing capacities in terms of positive and negative impacts; they show endless growth patterns (de Vries et al., 2021) for many system indicators (Rockström et al., 2009; Springmann et al., 2018). These are for example the increasing earth’s surface temperatures (Vermeulen et al., 2012; IPCC, 2023), loss of biodiversity (IPBES, 2019), shrinking freshwater resources (UN, 2022), food and health insecurity (Gillespie and van den Bold, 2017; FAO, 2022), and increasing food prices. Today, the steep rise in inflation rates results in a 40% price index change compared to 2015–2020 (Eurostat, 2023), directly threatening food security. In addition, they may be connected to injustice, inequity, unequal income distribution, poor working conditions and even disregarding food as a right or common good for citizens (Clapp, 2021; Jackson et al., 2021).

Since systems that are revealing endless growth patterns are ending in chaos (Prigogine and Stengers, 1985), urgent transformative and food system approaches (Egal and Berry, 2020; Scaramuzzi et al., 2023) are now requested. Today, patterns are not any more sustainable in terms of social, economic, and environmental impact, so there is a widespread agreement about a need to change. This holds for changes from local to global scales and across scales (Béné et al., 2019), using comprehensive sustainability assessment methods (Hebinck et al., 2021).

Understanding specifically the diversity and cooperation between multiple food system actors in complex food systems and their willingness to collaborate and co-create sustainable value in different contexts and scales is very important. However, only recently it is a subject of research (Sacchi et al., 2018; Contini et al., 2020). This article contributes to existing literature by investigating 52 cases from different European countries, collected in the framework of the Horizon Europe project FOODPathS.¹ A common template for all case studies was used to elucidate generic and case-specific insights.

The main research question is: how does multi-actor cooperation take place and contribute to transitions towards sustainable food systems? The concept of ‘co-creation’ originating from business theory is used to analyze the diversity and complexity of possible cooperation arrangements for sustainable food systems, considered as a joint and collaborative process of producing new value (Galvagno and Dalli, 2014). The article aims to unravel the variety of configurations for multiple value co-creation in food systems, to understand how actors collaborate to reach common objectives, and to develop a concept for researching partnerships in real life, targeting the transitions towards sustainable food systems. Also, this study contributes to informing policies, as well as research and innovation projects, aiming at supporting co-creation and collaboration in food systems striving for sustainable outcomes.

Multi-actor arrangements for cooperation in food systems have been analyzed in scientific literature through diverse theoretical concepts. In particular, researchers have employed the concepts of value chains (e.g., Gereffi and Lee, 2012), networks (e.g., Goodman et al., 2012), clusters (e.g., Asheim and Coenen, 2005) or collective action (e.g., Markelova et al., 2009) to study cooperative dynamics and outcomes.

Here, we propose to use the concept of ‘co-creation’ which allows capturing systemic approaches including interactions and interrelations between various actors, i.e., policy-makers, producers, and users, from different sectors relevant to food systems, i.e., production of products, policies, and innovation.

Co-creation is not a new concept but has significantly expanded in the last 20 years. Early work that focused on customer participation in producing goods and services and its benefits for firms, e.g., in terms of increased productivity has been traced back to the late 1970s (Bendapudi and Leone, 2003). The concept has especially become popular through the work of Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004) and Vargo and Lusch (2004) who consider co-creation as a joint collaborative value-creation process by the company and the customers/consumers. This is then an open process of interactions between the actors for the design and development of new goods and services, in a wide range of sectors. The potential benefits of co-creation are bilateral: more customer satisfaction and loyalty on the one hand, but also a richer value proposition for the customer and thereby added value and competitive advantage for the business, leading to a win-win situation. Later, different stakeholders were included in such dynamic co-creation processes, such as policymakers, financial and business partners, and employees (Agrawal et al., 2015).

Furthermore, the concept has spread in time to refer to a broad set of social innovations that are not necessarily connected to the production of new goods and services but rather to institutional innovation within the public sector and civil society. Here the end-users are citizens, and the objective is to address societal challenges through an open innovation process between politicians and citizens (Voorberg et al., 2015; Torfing et al., 2019).

Next, co-creation also refers to processes of co-design and open innovation (Ind and Coates, 2013). The focus is then on collaborative and open (product) innovation processes involving companies and end-users (Chesbrough, 2003; Von Hippel, 2006). This latter perspective on co-creation has more recently been used in the context of open and participatory research, where researchers step out of their laboratories to meet ‘real-life problems’ and interact with multiple stakeholders to co-create knowledge (Jull et al., 2017). Such co-creation processes are facilitated in platforms and environments increasingly referred to as Living Labs, designed for meetings and interactions between researchers and non-researchers (Leminen et al., 2012; Gamache et al., 2020). Still, the concept of co-creation may be difficult to grasp.

In this article, we, therefore, propose to bridge the different strands of co-creation literature discussed above and to use the definition of co-creation elaborated by Ramaswamy and Ozcan (2018, p. 200), expressed as the “enactment of interactional creation across interactive system-environments (afforded by interactive platforms), entailing agencing engagements and structuring organizations.” This definition allows us to explore cooperation and co-creation by diverse actors in food systems and their wider environments. In particular, we address the (i) diversity of actors in the collaboration initiatives, (ii) types of interactions between actors in these initiatives and their operating scales, (iii) joint objectives and employment of a variety of strategies to reach them, and (iv) contribution to the sustainability of food systems. The latter point is not expressed in the co-creation definition above but is crucial for considering the sustainability impact of co-created value by diverse actors in a well-defined food system.

To address the above-stated aims, data from 52 cases of multi-actor collaboration have been collected between 2022 and 2023 in the framework of the Horizon Europe project FOODPathS (2023). These cases are listed in the Appendix. The FOODPathS consortium unites 17 organizations representing 19 multi-stakeholder networks, including actors of the public, private, academic, and civil society (including philanthropic foundations) sectors. The common objective is to develop a prototype European Partnership on Sustainable Food Systems, in particular its governance model(s), systemic ways of operating, funding mechanisms, sustainability charter, and exemplary case studies; the latter may trigger others, hence generating a snow-ball effect. During this project, the partners have participated in mapping different co-creation cases.

To co-perform the case studies and data collection with different actors, the researchers have employed a framework designed earlier by de Vries et al. (2022) with seven building blocks. These are easily recognizable and understandable by diverse stakeholders, including global citizens, since these are the bricks of a game:

For this study, the partners of the FOODPathS project were asked to identify and describe representative cases of co-creation in food systems in Europe, in particular including the involvement of private sector actors. These cases should be well-known by them, described in the literature or publicly available websites, cover different scales (from local to global), and provide data for all seven building blocks. Also, the cases should reveal information about interactions among actors, as well as their history. The study aimed to search cases that could activate as many different actors as possible, involved in a multi-actor co-creation exercise, that seeks to reach impact in their local, regional, national, European, or global contexts. The exact categories and questions used in the cases are illustrated in Figure 1; it presents the template used for all case studies. Data from the 52 cases have mainly been analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively, as discussed below.

In this section, results are presented, starting with the diversity of actors involved (section 4.1). A diversity of actors involved in the collaboration initiatives, the types of interactions between actors and their operating scales (section 4.2). Types of interactions between actors and their operating scale, the joint objectives and strategies (section 4.3). The joint objectives and strategies, and finally the sustainability outcomes (section 4.4). The contribution to the sustainability of food systems.

Results are discussed concerning our main research question of how food system actors from public, private, academic, and civil society (including philanthropic foundations) sectors cooperate to reach a common objective, and how does this contribute to the sustainability of food systems?

The empirical findings presented are solely based on a selection of 52 representative cases in the broad European food systems arena. Although more cases might exist, the selected cases already show heterogeneity in terms of actors involved (section 4.1. A diversity of actors involved in the collaboration initiatives), objectives (Table 1), dominant partnership types (Figure 2), strategies (Table 2), and sustainability outcomes (Figure 3).

Furthermore, the developed methodology, based on the structure of a game, allowed systematically describing very different collaboration initiatives. Results can be coherently discussed, as in the following four sub-sections.

Following the three aims of this paper – namely unraveling the variety of co-creation cases for their contribution to the sustainability of food systems, understanding how actors collaborate to reach common objectives within the boundaries of sustainability, and developing a co-creation concept for partnerships (Figure 4) – our insights lead to the following conclusions.

The 52 cases have contributed to the visibility and novel empirical insights into highly distinctive food system partnerships in Europe. Thanks to the methodology based on the game structure with seven building blocks, information was collected and analyzed in a structured way by different actors even if collaboration initiatives and their contexts, scales, products, and boundary conditions were highly different.

Also, common features could be extracted from the data regarding interactions between actors, joint activities, a wide range of common objectives and diverse strategies, as well as contributions to sustainability. The latter revealed that in particular measurement and interpretation of sustainability contributions require attention due to different environments and scales.

Our data about interactions elucidated the richness of diverse partnerships allowing actors to jointly and strategically operate to reach common sustainability objectives. However, these also expressed the need for a structuring of partnerships in orientations and scales. A typology of partnerships that are either predominantly networking-, policy-, entrepreneurship-, innovation-, research-, education- or observatory-oriented help structuring (public) support actions at different scales.

The current co-creation literature addresses multi-actor activities to create a commonly accepted value. Our scientific contribution underlines the significance of how joint co-creation activities and interactions between heterogeneous actors, in diverse partnership settings, result in commonly defined sustainable value creation. A scheme that connects the co-creation definition with partnerships structured according to a game has been presented in Figure 4.

This scheme, based on a definition of co-creation in literature, will guide the Partnership on Sustainable Food Systems, and others in Europe, to support distinctive, well-structured collaboration with common, realistic objectives. Based on the discussion of results obtained in the 52 case studies, 6 main recommendations have been formulated above (chapter 5).

Finally, this work evokes new research questions. One concerns the role and types of actions of public actors and civil society, but also other actors that act as intermediaries. Another question is about the type, inclusiveness, and adaptability of innovative governance models that are at the core of co-creation processes and the transformation of food systems to reach our sustainability development goals. These themes are currently elaborated on in in-depth case studies.

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

HV: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Validation, Supervision, Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. MD: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft, Validation, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Conceptualization. FF: Writing – original draft, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. MM: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation. JL-M: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation, Conceptualization. EC: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. CA: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. JM: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. GA: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. DR: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. EP: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. TM: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. AB: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. JV: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. VA: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. LL: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation. AV: Writing – review & editing, Investigation, Data curation.