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The treatment of organic waste, by‐products and other residual materials from bio‐based industries is currently changing from disposing to recycling and reusing activities, which may create significant added values. However, these valorisation pathways as well as their institutional and geographical contexts are not yet sufficiently understood. From an actor‐centric perspective, we seek to shed light on extant practices of agri‐food waste valorisation using the examples of potato and rapeseed production in Lower Saxony, Germany. Drawing on conceptual thoughts on circular bioeconomies and the nexus approach, we will show that these practices not only depend on the availability of (technological) solutions but are affected by changing economic and political environments in combination with place‐specific conditions and local networks. We further describe the cross‐sectoral relations, synergies and externalities that come along with by‐product valorisation in multi‐use systems, while also revealing the fragile stability of circular bioeconomies that are linked to the food–feed–energy nexus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Zealand's regions exhibit marked spatial variations in firm formation, with the urban areas being less entrepreneurial than the rest of the country, when the analysis controls for the varying sizes of regions. This empirical finding reflects differences in industry structures, with a greater presence of firm births in manufacturing industries and business services in more peripheral and less urbanised areas, especially on the South Island of New Zealand. Using the business demographic statistics (BDS) database by Statistics New Zealand we develop a regression model to explain spatial variations in firm formations over the period 2000–2005. The following explanatory factors are found to be of central importance for firm formations in the New Zealand context: concentration, firm size, population, population growth, income growth and specialisation. Implications of the findings for policy makers and politicians in New Zealand are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]