Identifying Endogenous and Exogenous Indicators to Measure Eco-Innovation within Clusters

Abstract

Scientific and business environment literature shows that green, sustainable innovation or eco-innovation has proven to be a source of competitive advantage today. The industrial clusters, their dynamism, and the synergies created within them attract a lot of attention from the scientific community. However, to date, the joint study of these two concepts and, more specifically, the factors that drive eco-innovation specifically in a cluster, have not been studied in depth. This article models eco-innovation in industrial clusters, thus addressing this gap and proposing a model based on information gathered from the literature and a detailed analysis of behavior in relation to eco-innovation in different sectors. Results suggest that including eco-innovation variables and measures may have positive implications such as improvements at the strategic level and the reduction of costs and use of resources. An eco-innovation model for clusters is proposed. It considers eight key factors that seek to raise its competitive level by promoting eco-innovation within clusters. The model includes five internal factors that analyze business capabilities and three external factors that study the effect of launching eco-innovative activities. This model could help the companies’ managers and those responsible for clusters in creating more successful strategies to increase competitiveness by enhancing eco-innovation. It could also serve as a guide for government entities in the performance of eco-innovative activities in economic sectors.

Innovation Indicators and the Innovation Process - Evidence from the European Innovation Scoreboard

“…According to the author, innovation for impact shifts the focus on implementing strategic alignment, thus delivering significant impact for social challenges. Following the importance of social innovation, Mercado-Caruso et al (2020) describe the notion of cluster, namely a group of companies that operate in different industries and cooperate in order to increase competition and generate new business networks.…”

A Methodological Framework to Support the Sustainable Innovation Development Process: A Collaborative Approach

“…The literature reveals important efforts to delimit, clarify, and harmonize the concept of SI. On the one hand, several authors adopt the term 'green innovation' to emphasise on the environmental component of sustainable innovation [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. On the other hand, some authors incorporate the three dimensions of sustainability, providing an extended definition of SI [3,29,30].…”

Relationship between innovativeness and competitiveness in networked organizations: A perspective from the electric and electronic industry in Brazil

“…Other studies (Boer & During, 2001;Brockman et al, 2012;Li et al, 2018;Paula & da Silva, 2017;Rubera & Kirca, 2012;Tang et al, 2013;Tracey & Tan, 2001) tried to identify which indicators would be more adequate to measure the organizational innovation performance. According to Mercado-Caruso et al (2020), there are exogenous factors that may also influence significantly the innovativeness of the organizations. The dimensions of the cultural and social aspects of each country are relevant to business management and organizational innovativeness, according to Ferreira et al (2019).…”