Drivers and Forms of Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will be focused on the study of drivers and forms of sustainability-oriented innovation. This term refers to a company’s intention to develop a product or service that contributes to economic, environmental and social sustainability. This understanding is behind the idea that companies can contribute to sustainable development and, at the same time, enjoy success in an increasingly dynamic and globalised market.

There is therefore an interest in the drivers and forms of sustainable innovation as a means of achieving a competitive advantage. In this regard, innovation is fundamental, as it is a strategy that contributes to sustainable development, while at the same time generating profit. It also leads to product development, market penetration, expansion and survival during unstable times, improvements in stakeholder integration, lower costs of products and materials, stable commercial relations and value creation in highly competitive markets. However, scholars have indicated that these innovations entail greater risks, as they encompass economic, social and environmental aspects. The situation is made still more complex, as sustainability-oriented innovation requires technological and financial capacity, the creation and management of alliances, responses to market and directional risks, and absorption in order for it to be recognised as an advantage.

To address such high levels of complexity, the existing literature indicates a greater propensity to innovate sustainably if companies have “external knowledge sources and cooperation agreements” and “intellectual capital”. In the former, through bilateral co-operation and cooperation networks (national and cross-border), knowledge management has shown itself to be one of the central factors for success, as it allows knowledge exchange processes to take place among companies and other stakeholders, leading to sustainability-oriented innovation. As regards the latter, intellectual capital has been seen as a moderating factor in sustainable innovation, defined as knowledge that can be transformed into value by way of three components: human capital, relational capital and structural or organisational capital.

To this complexity is added “sustainable geography”, as a third critical factor. The interconnection between sustainable innovation and geographical space highlights the importance of the spatial reference and specific and unique conditions of each location. It allows us to understand how the cooperation processes and patterns occur and evolve on diverse spatial scales, which is evidence that success in sustainable innovation is unequally distributed in terms of its geography.

Spatially referenced data offer valuable contextual and local information. They reveal problems such as spatial concentration, interactions, heterogeneity and spatial dependence, and should be properly addressed in data analysis and the specification and subsequent estimation of regression models.

Lastly, the literature indicates that foreign direct investment may be a determining factor as a driving force of sustainable development because:

1. It has the capacity to influence the wellbeing of societies through its contribution of knowledge assets; it is a stable and resistant form of financing, which leads to know-how-related benefits and demand creation.
2. It is a good catalyser of internal investment. It complements local resources and boosts confidence. It improves a company’s image, affecting its financial intermediation and increasing its credit possibilities. It generates new employment opportunities, facilitates technology transfer and improves management capacity.

However, attracting foreign direct investment is no easy task. It depends on the local environment where the receiving companies are located and on how it is introduced. These companies often have better human capital, better practices and organisation methods and different cooperation and location models.

The aim of this Special Issue is to generate new ideas regarding the factors and forms of attaining sustainability-oriented innovation. It is clear that greater efforts are still needed in order for there to be a clearer understanding of this phenomenon, despite the large number of relevant research projects that have already been carried out.

Studies that involve critical theory analysis, comparative observation, empirical evidence, qualitative methodology, findings from case studies and longitudinal research related to the Special Issue are promising and welcome. From an interdisciplinary perspective, we hope to cover a wide range of topics regarding sustainability-oriented innovations:

• Assessment of the factors and forms that are most efficient in the management of innovation to attain profits and meet the requirements of sustainability-oriented innovation (strategic innovations, organisational structure, business models, company openness, etc.).
• The specific characteristics of the practices, process and results of sustainability-oriented innovation that may help to revise the complexity of said innovation.
• Analysis of the influence of the factors that affect practices, processes and results related to sustainability-oriented innovation, faced with the possible influences of the diverse external sources for obtaining knowledge (bilateral co-operation, sustainable cooperation networks and cross-border cooperation).
• Moderating/mediating factors of the relationship between geographical factors and the practices, processes and results of sustainability-oriented innovation.
• Empirical research into spatial statistics and econometrics applied to sustainability-oriented innovation, including studies with spatial data analysis, linear and nonlinear spatial regression models, multilevel spatial modelling, spatial interaction models (gravity models) and models with spatial and/or spatial-temporal dependency using non-parametric methods.
• The differential effect generated by having foreign direct investment.

Dr. Agustín Alvarez
Dr. Alberto Melane-Lavado
Guest Editors

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