Leaders and Laggards in Environmental Innovation: An Empirical Analysis of SMEs in Europe

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is studying the factors influencing eco‐innovative intensity in the European SMEs. Building upon the 'innovation triangle model', business competences, environmental orientation and network involvement are considered as the main determinants of 'greenness' of innovation in a sample of 3852 SMEs. Four categories of eco‐innovators (leaders, followers, loungers and laggards) are identified, and their profiles/driving factors are described using a generalized ordinal logistic model. Our results confirm that the increasing demand for green products and the adoption of eco‐organizational innovation affect positively the level of environmental innovation, while technological lock‐ins have the opposite effect across all categories. Neither leaders nor laggards are influenced by environmental policies. Small firms and those who give importance to financial constraints tend not to achieve upper categories, while valuing technological capabilities, market power and networks are crucial determinants of being in upper categories of eco‐innovation intensity. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Effects of Socially Responsible Supplier Development and Sustainability‐Oriented Innovation on Sustainable Development: Empirical Evidence from SMEs

“…In contrast, items 24 through 29 show the diversity of organizational innovation practices adopted by SMEs and are consistent with recent empirical evidence concerning searching for external resources (Halme & Korpela, 2014), establishing environmental management systems and teams (Triguero et al, 2016), implementing supply chain management (Hofmann et al, 2012;Johnson, 2015), and considering the needs of stakeholders (Testa et al, 2016;Triguero et al, 2016). This suggests that for some SME suppliers, the vision of sustainable development vision is still vague.…”

In Persuit of Eco-innovation. Drivers and Consequences of Eco-innovation at Firm Level

“…Concerning Hypothesis 2, which posits a positive and significant relationship between customer demand and eco-innovations, we found strong support for the construct-level eco-innovation model (standardized coefficient 0.30), which is consistent with numerous research works (Ziegler and Rennings 2004;Le et al 2006;Kivimaa 2007;Horbach 2008;Lewis and Cassells 2010;Popp et al 2011;Weng and Lin 2011;Zeng et al 2011;Doran and Ryan 2012;Oxborrow and Brindley 2013;Bocken et al 2014;Cai and Zhou 2014;Chassagnon and Haned 2014;Doran and Ryan 2014;Li 2014;Triguero et al 2014). Furthermore, our results offer strong empirical evidence for the relationship between customer demand and product eco-innovation (standardized coefficient 0.29), in line with prior research (Ziegler and Rennings 2004;Rehfeld et al 2007;Triebswetter and Wackerbauer 2008;Horbach et al 2012;Lin et al 2013a;Lin et al 2013b;Triguero et al 2013).…”

Differences of Corporate Environmental Responsibility in Small and Medium Enterprises: Spain and Norway

“…Triguero et al [14] explore the differences between the factors influencing eco-innovation, based on the innovation triangle of Dijken et al [15] (business competences, environmental orientation and network relations). They also group eco-innovators into four categories based on their eco-investment effort (laggards, loungers, followers and leaders).…”