The role of environmental innovation through the technological proximity in the implementation of the sustainable development

This paper explores the relationship between a firm's knowledge sourcing strategy and green innovation. The data are taken from Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development REGPAT database, February 2016, relative to the European Patent Office firms' patent applications published up to December 2015. The study contributes to the literature by focusing on the moderating role of integration between different activities related to environmental performance on the relationship between knowledge sources and green innovations. The results from 240 firms indicate a shift in the focus from internal knowledge to external knowledge when developing environmental innovations. Government policies promoting more knowledge complementarity and coordination between environmental fields will help to promote more knowledge transfer, allowing more sustainable development.     

Environmental Requirements,Knowledge Sharing and Green Innovation: Empirical Evidence from the Electronics Industry in China

Building on the Porter hypothesis, which posits that regulatory stringency triggers innovation and thereby allows firms to achieve the dual purpose of environment protection and enhanced business performance, the present research develops an integrative model that explores the determinants of green innovation with a focus being placed on knowledge sharing. Data were collected from 203 green innovation project leaders from electronics manufacturers operating in China. The results indicate that knowledge sharing mediates the relationship between green requirements and new green product success as well as that between green requirements and green product and process innovations. Interestingly, the empirical analysis rejects the hypothesized positive influence of green requirements on green product and process innovations as well as that on new green product success, while confirming that there exists a direct and positive association between green requirements and knowledge sharing. The direct positive impact of knowledge sharing is the strongest on green process innovation. This study provides a theoretical basis for investigating the possible determinants in the causal links between green requirements and green innovation success and establishes that knowledge sharing and green process innovation may be the points where leverage can be applied to best secure innovation success. Implications of the findings on environmental policy and law design are also discussed to see how the regulatory role of the government can be better positioned to facilitate compliance and innovation. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Enhancing green product and process innovation: Towards an integrative framework of knowledge acquisition and environmental investment

Despite the increasing interest in green innovation literature, little is known on how and under what conditions firms' knowledge transfer activities affect green innovation. There is lack of research that on how particular organizational capabilities are seen more useful and how it influences on green innovation performance. To address this research gap, we examine a mediation model in which we explore whether a firm's knowledge acquisition capability and investment in environmental management mediate the impact of buyer-driven knowledge transfer activities on green product innovation and green process innovation. On the basis of an analysis of a sample of 239 manufacturing firms, we find that buyer-driven knowledge activities have a greater positive impact on green product innovation than green process innovation. Investment in environmental management fully mediates the relationship between buyer-driven knowledge transfer activities and green process innovation, and knowledge acquisition capability partially mediates the relationship between buyer-driven knowledge transfer activities and green product innovation. The current study provides evidence that internal competencies and the role of buyers in knowledge transfer are critical for explaining the green product innovation and green process innovation. Our results suggest that buyer involvement pushes firms to develop resource acquisition capability to enhance green product innovation. Our results also highlight the importance of investment in environmental management for overcoming the environmental challenges in the manufacturing firms.     

Environmental Innovations and Internationalization: Theory and Practices

Based on original data on Italian firms specializing in medium‐ and low‐tech industries, we study the relationship between firms’ upstream and downstream internationalization and their propensity to introduce products or processes that reduce environmental impact. Preliminary evidence suggests that geography plays an important role in green firms’ activities and supply chains. More precisely, results suggest that firms that outsource to and rely on non‐local suppliers are less likely to engage in environmental innovations. Moreover, we verify that firms engaged in export activities play a similar and negative role, regardless of the export intensity and typology of foreign markets (i.e. developed versus emerging). Tapping global flows of knowledge by being a part of a multinational group positively spurs the development of green innovations, as for FDIs. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Inter‐firm R&D collaborations and green innovation value: The role of family firms' involvement and the moderating effects of proximity dimensions

The present paper investigates the relationship between the involvement of family firms in R&D collaborations aimed at developing green solutions and the value of resulting innovations. To dig into this relationship, the moderating effects of two proximity dimensions (i.e., geographical distance and technological relatedness) are also assessed. Analyses are based on a sample of 156 joint patents classified into the “Alternative energy production” field, as defined by the International Patent Classification Green Inventory and successfully filed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office in the period 1997–2010 by publicly listed companies. According to our conjectures, results reveal a positive relationship between the involvement of family firms and green innovation value. Moreover, our findings show that this relationship is hindered when partners are geographically distant or technologically proximate. Eventually, we contribute to the literature on green innovation by unveiling under which conditions inter‐firm R&D collaborations lead to more valuable innovations.     

Environmental Innovations as a Source of Competitive Advantage or Vice Versa?

The aim of this paper is to examine the links between developed environmental innovations and the competitiveness of firms. It seeks answers to the question: Are the developed environmental innovations associated with the improved or impaired competitiveness of firms? In addition, it explores how competitive advantage is created along the innovation process. This will be done by comparing the successful and unsuccessful green innovators. The empirical evidence is based on the longitudinal dataset gathered from 128 Finnish firms which have developed one or more environmental innovations. The data covers nine years from 2002 to 2010. This study provides two contributions to academic literature. First, it deepens the existing knowledge of how environmental innovations are associated with competitive advantage. It identifies the types of competitive advantages as well as potential disadvantages along the innovation process. Second, this study demonstrates how the competitive advantage was enhanced along the successful innovation process. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Customer and Supplier Collaboration in Green Product Innovation: External and Internal Capabilities

Firms collaborate in green product innovation to develop products with less environmental impact. These products typically use less energy, have lower emissions and incorporate more environmentally friendly materials. In an industrial setting, firms often collaborate along the supply chain with customers and suppliers. This paper focuses on external and internal capabilities that firms need when collaborating in green product innovation. The paper builds on data from five large industrial firms in ten case studies, in which these firms collaborate with customers and suppliers to innovate green products to an industrial market. External and internal capabilities are investigated. The study points to the importance of finding a suitable partner. Partners need to have environmental expertise and contribute knowledge or technology that is new to the firm. Firms need to combine relational capabilities, such as trust, with contractual agreements in collaborative innovations. The findings point to the importance of knowledge management with the partner as well as internally in the firm. The study shows that no partner collaboration operates in isolation but is situated in a network context. Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Boundary‐spanning search and firms' green innovation: The moderating role of resource orchestration capability

Building on resource‐based theory and resource orchestration theory, we investigate the impact of two characteristics of boundary‐spanning search, search breadth and search depth, on firms' exploitative and exploratory green innovations. We also examine the moderating role of resource orchestration capability. The results of data analysis from 186 manufacturing firms in China show that both search breadth and search depth have inverted U‐shaped relationships with exploitative and exploratory green innovations. Furthermore, resource orchestration capability is found to moderate the inverted U‐shaped relationship between boundary‐spanning search and green innovation. Specifically, with high resource orchestration capability, the inverted U‐shaped relationships of search breadth with exploitative and exploratory green innovations are flattened, whereas the relationships of search depth with exploitative and exploratory green innovations are almost linear. Our research contributes to the literature on green innovation by uncovering the complex effects of boundary‐spanning search on exploitative and exploratory green innovations.     

Green Knowledge Sharing,Stakeholder Pressure,Absorptive Capacity,and Green Innovation: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Firms

A central issue faced by many Chinese manufacturing firms is how to absorb and utilize green knowledge shared among supply chain members for superior green innovation. Invoking the indirect research stream of organizational learning theory, we develop a moderated mediation model in which absorptive capacity mediates the interactive effects of green knowledge sharing and stakeholder pressure on green innovation. Our hypotheses were tested using a sample of 247 Chinese manufacturing firms. The results from multiple regression and bootstrapping tests reveal that absorptive capacity fully mediates the link between green knowledge sharing and green innovation, and the mediation effect is positively contingent upon stakeholder pressure. These findings provide managerial implications for Chinese manufacturing firms, recommending that these firms effectively develop their absorptive capacities and closely monitor stakeholder pressure to realize the green innovation benefits of green knowledge sharing.     

Italian industrial districts as cognitive systems: Are they still reproducible?

Adopting a knowledge-based perspective, this study develops a framework of how Italian industrial districts (IDs) operate and evolve as cognitive systems. First, we analyse the mechanisms that facilitate knowledge diffusion across firms within IDs, the enabler of cross-firm knowledge transfer (absorptive capacity) and the process of producing new knowledge by combination. Within this analysis, we consider the formation of new firms resulting from the break-away of human resources from existing district firms (spin-offs) as a particular form of knowledge transfer and production within districts. Knowledge production by combination may take place not only within boundaries of IDs, but also involve external sources. We suggest that innovations made by combining internal and external knowledge have played an important role in shaping the evolutionary trajectories of IDs. Finally, again from the cognitive perspective, we address the issue of how globalization impacts on district systems, concentrating on the positive role that two different types of local actors play in their reproduction and evolution: the global–local firms and institutions providing knowledge-intensive business services.     

Successful eco‐innovators: Exploring the association between open inbound knowledge strategies and the performance of eco‐innovative firms

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the association between open inbound knowledge strategies and the performance of eco‐innovative firms in the food and beverage industry. We propose a mixed framework based on the eco‐innovation literature and the open innovation approach. We consider the characteristics in a traditional sector based upon a resource‐based perspective. Three types of firms are distinguished in terms of their sales growth in the Spanish food industry from the least to the most successful eco‐innovators. Using multinomial logistic regression models, it is shown that the diversity of collaborators (breadth of external sources of knowledge) and joint adoption of product and process eco‐innovations are positively associated with the probability of achieving high sales growth. Moreover, we find an inverted U‐shaped relationship between the breadth of the external search and firm performance, but only for the group of the most successful firms. Moreover, operational flexibility, knowledge‐based capabilities and company size are also positively related to the group of successful eco‐innovators.     

Managing knowledge through human resource practices: empirical examination on the Spanish automotive industry

This paper considers the relationship between human resource management (HRM) and knowledge management (KM). Specifically, it examines how the human resource (HR) practices that are expected to impact on employees’ abilities, motivation, and opportunity to engage in KM, do so by enabling knowledge sharing, knowledge maintaining, and knowledge creation within organizations. HRM expected to impact employees’ abilities include training and development practices. HRM expected to impact on employees’ motivation include rewards and appraisal practices. HRM expected to impact on employees’ opportunities including providing the support of trusting collaborative relationships. Therefore, HR practices impacting employees’ abilities, motivation, and opportunities are expected to be positively related to knowledge sharing and maintaining within organizations. HR practices impacting employees’ abilities, motivation, and opportunity are expected to be positively related to knowledge creation through their effect on knowledge sharing within organizations. Our research methodology uses a questionnaire survey approach to collect data from firms belonging to the Spanish automotive industry. Results from a final sample of 64 Spanish automotive firms show that HR practices aimed at motivating and giving employees the opportunity to behave as expected significantly affect knowledge sharing and maintaining. Further, knowledge sharing and maintaining is shown to mediate the relationship between HR practices and knowledge creation. The paper ends with a conclusion, limitations and implications for future research.     

The more the merrier? Network portfolio size and innovation performance in Nigerian firms

A positive relationship between firms' networking activities and innovativeness has been consistently established in the literature on innovation. However, studies considering different innovation types, and on developing countries are scarce. This paper addresses questions concerning the relationship between networking strategies and innovativeness of firms, using innovation survey data on Nigerian firms. Quantile regression is applied to trace the link between portfolio size and innovation at different levels of innovative success. The results show a positive relationship between a firm's innovation performance and the size of its networking portfolio. This relationship varies across different innovation types and with increasing innovation performance. The findings suggest that the widely accepted portfolio approach to external search for knowledge is not necessarily always the best—its utility depends on the firm's current level of innovative success. This poses a challenge for open innovation.     

Knowledge flow and inter-firm networks: The influence of network resources,spatial proximity and firm size

The objective of this paper is to analyse the characteristics and nature of the networks that firms utilize to access knowledge and facilitate innovation. The paper draws on the notion of network resources, distinguishing two types: social capital–consisting of the social relations and networks held by individuals; and network capital–consisting of the strategic and calculative relations and networks held by firms. The methodological approach consists of a quantitative analysis of data from a survey of firms operating in knowledge-intensive sectors of activity. The key findings include: social capital investment is more prevalent among firms frequently interacting with actors from within their own region; social capital investment is related to the size of firms; firm size plays a role in knowledge network patterns; and network dynamism is an important source of innovation. Overall, firms investing more in the development of their inter-firm and other external knowledge networks enjoy higher levels of innovation. It is suggested that an over-reliance on social capital forms of network resource investment may hinder the capability of firms to manage their knowledge networks. It is concluded that the link between a dynamic inter-firm network environment and innovation provides an alternative thesis to that advocating the advantage of network stability.     

Structural social capital and knowledge acquisition: implications of cluster membership

This paper analyzes the implications of belonging to a cluster through the relationship between structural social capital and knowledge acquisition. The findings suggest structural social capital only indirectly affects knowledge acquisition through the relational and cognitive dimensions of firms’ membership of a cluster. However, the structural dimension also has a direct impact on knowledge for external firms outside a cluster. This paper contributes to the cluster literature with a better contextualization and understanding of the relationship between structural social capital and knowledge acquisition. In addition, the paper also consolidates the inter-organizational approach to social capital theory by helping to understand how and in what context social capital dimensions are interrelated. The study analyzes how firms can acquire valuable knowledge from their networks, filling the gap in the literature on how this process occurs inside and outside clusters. This works also proposes recommendations for companies and institutions, and new complementary lines of research.     

Impact of Green Innovation on Labor Productivity and its Determinants: an Analysis of the Korean Manufacturing Industry

Due to worsening environmental conditions around the globe, firms have been investing a great deal of money in green technologies as a way of coping with the environmental crisis. This paper uses a unique data set based on the Korea Innovation Survey to examine the impact of green innovation on labor productivity, and the determinants of environmental activities in 2010. The empirical results show that green innovation intended for both firm and customer benefits has a positive effect on labor productivity. This finding means that firms need to implement firm‐oriented green innovation as well as customer‐oriented green innovation in order to increase their performance. Our findings also show that there are significant differences in aggregate green innovations depending on different firm sizes and industries. Specifically, large firms implement environmental activities more than small ones, and pollution‐intensive industries tend to invest more in activities related to environmental technology. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Entry into Insular Domains: A Longitudinal Study of Knowledge Structuration and Innovation in Biotechnology Firms

We focus on the firm's decision to enter insular technology domains and its effect on the impact that its subsequent innovation has on the field. Insular domains are technical domains that rely heavily on prior innovations within the same domain for subsequent innovations. We show that the returns to entering insular domains vary with the firm's depth and breadth of knowledge. By analysing data from 128 biotechnology firms over a 20‐year period, we find that the relationship between depth of technological capabilities and technology impact is nuanced: depth is necessary but not sufficient for high impact innovation. Firms whose knowledge is spread over disparate domains have negative returns from entering insular domains. The implications of these findings for theories of innovation and the discovery of entrepreneurial opportunities are discussed.     

Knowledge Spillovers and Alliance Formation

Our study examines the conditions under which firms enter into strategic alliances subsequent to knowledge spillovers. We propose that spillovers serve as signals of knowledge dependence and potential complementarity, encouraging alliance formation to enable better learning and limit appropriation. We posit that the likelihood of a knowledge alliance subsequent to a spillover is contingent on the specialization of each of the firms in the knowledge involved in the spillover. We also hypothesize that the effects of such specialization on knowledge alliance formation are moderated by technological ties and geographic distance between the dyad involved in the spillover. Our results demonstrate significance for the effects of specialization, supporting learning and appropriation motivations. Technological ties strengthen while geographic distance weakens the relationship between specialization and alliance formation.     

Radical innovations in new product development and their financial performance implications: An event study of US manufacturing firms

At the dawn of the 21st century, global competition continues to increase at an accelerating rate and radical innovation is recognized as a potent weapon for firms to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. Academics, practitioners and consultants share the view that radical innovation is important to the long-term financial success of firms. Nevertheless, empirical studies on the relationship between radical innovation and firm performance have been dominated by survey research, which provided little concrete evidence on the financial impact of radical innovation. In this study we traced the financial performance of publicly traded manufacturing firms in the United States that introduced radical innovations over the period 1986-2000 and examined whether radical innovation could lead to superior financial performance in these firms. We employed the event-study method, matching each sample firm with a control group of firms in the same industry with similar pre-event performance and firm size. Our results show that while radical innovation helps firms maintain sales growth and return on sales (ROS), firm profitability in terms of return on assets (ROA) is not significantly improved. In fact, manufacturers suffer from a decline in profitability upon the introduction of radical innovations in new product development.     

Green innovation to respond to environmental regulation: How external knowledge adoption and green absorptive capacity matter?

Although environmental regulations have been considered as important forces of conducting green innovation, how and under what conditions they affect green innovation are still unclear. Drawing from institutional theory, this study used survey data from 237 manufacturing firms in China to investigate how two dimensions of environmental regulations (i.e., command and control regulation and market‐based regulation) affect green product innovation and green process innovation. Further, this article examined the mediating role of external knowledge adoption and the moderating role of green absorptive capacity. Our results indicate that both command and control regulation and market‐based regulation have positive influences on external knowledge adoption. External knowledge adoption fully mediates these positive relationships. In addition, green absorptive capacity only strengthens the positive impact of market‐based regulation on external knowledge adoption. Our study contributes to institutional theory and green innovation literature.