Managing Environmentally Sustainable Innovation

Sustainability is a phenomenon that must be pursued in a complex system of interrelated elements of business, society, and ecology. It is important to gain an understanding of these elements, the interplay between them, and the behavior of the system. This book explores the business-societal-and-ecological system in which sustainable innovation has to be envisioned, conceptualized, realized, and improved. Author Bart Bossink offers insight into the systematic coherence of drivers of eco-innovation and sustainability utilizing a three-part approach: (1) eco- and sustainable innovation in business is based on ideas and people who cooperatively develop these ideas; (2) groups of people, organized in commercial firms, must realize these ideas cooperatively and create the innovations that can conquer the market; and (3) that people from governmental, non-governmental, not-for-profit, research, and commercial organizations can build institutional arrangements that stimulate these sustainable innovations, changing both industry and society. Adopting a managerial perspective and discussing concepts and methods to manage eco-innovation in business, this book highlights the interrelated roles of the individual, the firm, partnerships, and business environments. Researchers and practitioners who want to combine a commercial and economical approach with an ethical and social ambition to create an ecologically sustainable firm stand to learn much from these pages.

This volume provides a management concept for sustainable innovation management in commercial and governmental organizations. It provides answers to the question how people, teams, projects, companies and governments can shape the innovation process towards sustainability while maintaining or improving a profitable financial performance.

Ian Maxwell applies decades of research and application to present a novel approach to innovation, with an emphasis on sustainable and renewable practices that benefit many, and not just a handful of executives and shareholders. Featuring examples from a wide range of innovators around the world, from Google to Genentech to the Masdar “clean” city initiative in Abu Dhabi, Maxwell argues that organizations that embrace structured innovation management systems and drive a “top down” innovation culture will achieve sustainable high growth and strong shareholder returns. Countries that provide the right physical, financial and human resource infrastructure to support a highly innovative macro-economic environment will experience both strong GPD growth and high living standards. Those companies and countries that fail to support innovation will struggle to compete and raise living standards, respectively. Maxwell considers the cases of China and India, whose low-cost innovation strategies are posing a serious competitive threat to established multinationals in the developed world, and considers the impact of innovation on such timely issues as climate change, environmental pollution, fossil fuel shortages, third world poverty, rising healthcare costs and ageing populations.

Facilitating Sustainable Innovation through Collaboration, takes an unusually international perspective of sustainable innovation with contributions from Australia, Europe, and North America. Prominent policy makers, scientific researchers and practitioners in this field provide various inputs and analyses relating to the development of sustainable innovations. It is expected that policy makers, organizations, individual researchers, students and even communities can further develop and implement concepts and practices by drawing on the variety of projects and theoretical foundations presented in this volume.

This book is an insightful text looking at sustainable innovation and the emerging fourth sector, i.e. hybrid organizations, through an interdisciplinary approach. The book illuminates what hybrid organizations are and how they generate new ways of creating blended value to secure the well-being of future generations and preservation of ecological services. The book also discusses how sustainable innovation may offer creative solutions to societal issues, the sharing economy and the circular economy. This book will appeal to those taking MBA and EMBA programmes, and those with an interest in creating sustainable business and innovation solutions.

Sustainable innovation (SI) is considered to be a key driver of societal progress in an era of enormous economic, environmental and societal challenges, and the uncertainties and future consequences that come with them. This book provides evidence, insights and reflections related to specific issues of governance, the management of sustainable innovation and applying a multi-level, multi-stakeholder approach to sustainable innovation analysis. Building on the European Commission (EU) funded research project “Public Participation in Developing a Common Framework for the Assessment and Management of Sustainable innovation” (CASI), it presents tools for assessing and managing sustainable innovation, and reflects on SI-related policies as well as citizens’ aspirations. The book is intended for scholars in the field of sustainable innovation, as well as to policymakers, innovators, students and citizens.

With sustainability having gained a lot of momentum over the last years and companies implementing strategies to create corporate sustainability, there are lots of opportunities for innovation. Thus, the two concepts of sustainability and innovation should not be considered separately - they are closely interlinked with one another. The main goal of sustainable innovation is to develop new products and technologies that have a positive impact on the company's triple-bottom-line. To meet this aim, they have to be ecologically and economically beneficial as well as socially balanced. In order to help companies to improve their sustainable innovation process practically, this book is structured into five possible phases of a sustainable innovation process: Awareness of a sustainability problem Identification & Definition of the problem Ideation & Evaluation of the solutions Testing & Enrichment of the solutions Implementation of the solutions & Green Marketing.