Sustainable Innovation: Strategy, Process and Impact

The most important theme of the discourse on sustainable development and sustainability challenges concerns the relationship between innovation and sustainability. This book represents a realistic critical overview of the state of affairs of sustainable innovations, offering an accessible and comprehensive diagnostic point of reference for both the academic and practitioner worlds. In order for sustainable innovation to truly become mainstream practice in business it is necessary to find out how organizations can strategically and efficiently accommodate sustainability and innovation in such a manner that they accomplish value capturing (for firms, stakeholders, and for society), not merely creating a return on the social responsibility agenda. Addressing this challenge, the book draws together research from a range of perspectives in order to understand the potential shifts and barriers, benefits, and outcomes from all angles: inception, strategic process, and impact for companies and society. The book also delivers insights of (open) innovation in public sector organizations, which is not so much a process of invention as it is one of adoption and diffusion. It examines how the environmental pillar of the triple bottom line in private firms is often a by-product of thinking about the economic pillar, where cost reductions may be achieved through process innovation in terms of eliminating waste and reducing energy consumption. The impact of open innovation on process innovation, and sustainable process innovation in particular, is an underexplored area but is examined in this book. It also considers the role of the individual entrepreneur in bringing about sustainable innovation; entrepreneurs, their small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), as well as the innovation ecosystems they build play a significant role in generating sustainable innovations where these smaller organizations are much more flexible than large organizations in targeting societal needs and challenges. The readership will incorporate PhD students and postgraduate researchers, as well as practitioners from organizational advisory fields.

Cosmina L. Voinea is assistant professor of Strategy and International Business at the Faculty of Management at the Open University of the Netherlands. Cosmina devotes her research to understanding the mechanisms and influences of market and non-market institutions on organizational strategic management and organizational responses to such influences; both internally (internal stakeholders: employees, shareholders) as well as externally (external stakeholders). She is particularly interested in studying responsible management practices specific both to internal and external contingencies. Her work has been disseminated through presentations at academic international conferences and international publications such as Scandinavian Journal of Management, Management International Review. Her academic and reviewer performance has been recognized by several awards including Best Paper award received from Strategic Management Group.

Nadine Roijakkers is full professor of Open Innovation at the Faculty of Management and general director at the Expertise Centre for Education at the Open University of the Netherlands. Nadine has published numerous articles on alliance management and open innovation management. Journal outlets for her work include among others Long Range Planning, Research Policy, Harvard Business History Review, British Journal of Management, European Management Journal, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Small Business Economics, California Management Review, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Organizational Dynamics, Journal of Service Management, and open access journals such as the International Journal of Innovation. Furthermore, she is co-editor of the first edited volume on "Researching Open Innovation in Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises” published by World Scientific.

Ward Ooms is assistant professor of Innovation Management at the Faculty of Management at the Open University of the Netherlands. Ward devotes his research efforts to understanding how firms, other types of organizations, and individuals within them can work together effectively to attain innovation outcomes faster, without obstructions, but responsibly. In doing so, he is particularly interested in studying effects of proximity between partners in industrial clusters and in inter-organizational collaborations. His research has been published in important academic journals, such as Technovation and the Journal of Business Research. His academic and reviewer performance has been recognized by several awards and award nominations.