Moving beyond the tensions in open environmental innovation towards a holistic perspective

Abstract

This paper analyses factors determining open environmental innovation (EI) and explores the possibility of embracing their tensions to achieve integrated environmental strategic goals.Building on recent literature linking open innovation and EI, the study assumes open EI strategic goals as a multidimensional construct based on the “synergistic and interwoven nature” of four identified enabling factors, that is, partners, knowledge, benefits, and motivations.A fuzzy‐set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) based on Boolean algebra is conducted to analyse a set of 186 European companies operating in the telecommunication and information and communication technology (ICT) service industries.Making important theoretical, managerial, and policy contributions, this paper offers insights into the key factors enabling open EI and the tensional relationships within and between them. In doing so, it captures the non‐linear effects among these factors and the strategic goals related to an open EI strategy. It also suggests how the paradox theory might help in addressing the tensional dilemma of open EI strategy.

Environmental Innovation, Open Innovation Dynamics and Competitive Advantage of Medium and Large-Sized Firms

“…Open innovation may provide all the needed knowledge from firms' external environment to their internal environment, in order to support their environmental innovations. The support of open innovation becomes critical as it is very difficult for firms to rely solely on their own resources to meet the environmental goals due to the need for novel processes and technologies [109].…”

Toward a Sustainable Decommissioning of Offshore Platforms in the Oil and Gas Industry: A PESTLE Analysis

“…In particular, final consumers may be motivated to adopt sustainable innovations because of their positive ecological and symbolic attributes, which refer to environmental benefits and positive characteristics to oneself and others [45]. Research on these models uncovers a variety of ideas about possible directions for solutions to ecological, social, and economic problems by stimulating the dissemination of new technologies, eco-innovations, and forms of organization which can contribute to the firm's performance in the alignment of their business to more sustainable practices [35,[46][47][48].…”

Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Well-Being and Sustainability

“…Studies on sustainable innovation highlight the multidimensional nature of this concept: sustainable innovation may involve either product/process or organizational/business model innovations to reduce or stabilize impacts from a social, environmental, and economic point of view [17][18][19]. Green innovation, eco-innovation, and responsible innovation are just some of the variations that have been recently emerging from the literature on the subject [20,21] and are expected to raise additional interest in the near future. Figure 1 displays that the number of management articles published for each theme has been continuously increasing since 2000.…”