Innovation process and needs of sustainability driven small firms

Innovation process and needs of sustainability driven small firms

Molenaar, N.
Keskin, D.
Diehl, J.C.
Lauche, K.

Industrial Design Engineering

2010-10-27

Traditional approaches to sustainable consumption and production emphasized addressing issues related to the natural environment and sustainability through optimizing existing products, processes and businesses. Even though the conventional wisdom suggests that young and new firms have greater advantages in innovation, there are few studies that address exploiting sustainable product ideas through new organizations. Therefore, this paper seeks to explore and characterize the innovation process of sustainability-driven small and young firms in the Netherlands, and reports on the results of an explorative study that involves the use of generative techniques during individual semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs and intermediary organizations. The results suggest that the novelty and radicalness of an innovation and the development phase of a firm are important factors that influence how firms organize for innovation, manage their network and in-source knowledge necessary for the innovation.

sustainable product development
small firms
entrepreneurs
intermediaries
the Netherlands

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:33945eed-8a7c-46a5-85ba-d7cbd8c16e0a

9789051550658

Knowledge Collaboration & Learning for Sustainable Innovation: ERSCP-EMSU Conference, 25-29 October 2010, Delft, The Netherlands

Institutional Repository

conference paper

(c) 2010 The Author(s)