Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Sustainable Economic Development

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue focuses on new research directions in green and sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship. Global environmental problems have worsened exponentially in recent years, and we are required to take better care of nature, on which all our economic activities, lives, and well-being completely depend.

The biodiversity crisis may have led to an exceptional increase in problems, but there are signs that it also offers new kinds of opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship. Based on a vision of treating Nature as an economic asset or a form of capital, the Dasgupta report calls for putting monetary quantitative tags on environmental benefits, reconfiguring economic success and how it can be indicated, to nurture and grow this form of capital in unforeseen ways (Dasgupta, 2021).

Currently, leading individuals, companies, and governments in many countries are already working to make Dasgupta’s vision a reality. New, exciting, or otherwise interesting services, products and methods. are surfacing. For example, eco-hairdressing, organizing organic food webs, climate-friendliness and sustainability restaurants are services that exhibit the new and emerging dimensions of value for consumers. Business-to-business products in the forest industry are now often more biodegradable than in the past. Upcycling in the fashion industry, for example, is transforming earlier methods of production and marketing in the industry.

Dasgupta’s vision is of valuing nature as an economic asset is not an isolated development. Consider how Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, shifted the focus of the climate debate from an environmental problem to an economic problem (Stern, 2007). Political initiatives such as the European Green Deal (Fetting, 2020) are calling for a scaling up of the innovation and seminal success of green and sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship for increases in and across economic prosperity, social well-being, and biodiversity.

We call for submissions of qualitative and/or quantitative research on various topics in green and sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship, responding to the dire needs put forth in the Stern and Dasgupta reports. Our bias is to favor submissions opening up new research questions and submissions that are novel and interesting for reasons other than focusing merely on strengthening earlier research findings and paradigms. In particular, we are keen to receive submissions that address phenomena traditionally considered “outliers” or “anomalies” from the perspective of research on innovation, entrepreneurship, and sustainable economic development. Theoretically and methodologically, we are agnostic but have backgrounds in, e.g., institutional theory, ethnography, and big data analysis.

References:

Dasgupta, P. (2021). The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. London: HM Treasury. Web: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/602e92b2e90e07660f807b47/The_Economics_of_Biodiversity_The_Dasgupta_Review_Full_Report.pdf.

Fetting, C. (2020). The European Green Deal. ESDN report, 53. Web: https://www.esdn.eu/fileadmin/ESDN_Reports/ESDN_Report_2_2020.pdf.

Stern, N.H. (2007). The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Web: https://www.osti.gov/etdeweb/biblio/20838308.

Dr. Antti Ainamo
Prof. Dr. Jari Kaivo-oja
Dr. Teemu Haukioja
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• sustainable economic development
• innovation
• entrepreneurship
• business model
• green economy
• strategy
• operations
• systemic innovation
• ecosystem
• ecological innovation