Dear Colleagues,

The topics of entrepreneurship and innovation are increasingly being recognized as essential to contribute to economic and social development (Sarango-Lalangui et al., 2018) and have been thoroughly scrutinized over time (Drucker, 1986).

Historically, innovation and entrepreneurship have often been linked to wealth generation and economic development. However, in recent decades, the emergence of grand challenges including environmental issues has prompted policy-makers, researchers, and entrepreneurs to go beyond the objectives of economic and financial wealth and foster innovative and entrepreneurial processes related to environmental and social protection (Terán-Yépez et al., 2020). Today, entrepreneurship and innovation are increasingly being expected to improve well-being and address sustainability issues, two challenges increasingly relevant, if not urgent, in light of the recent Sars-Cov-2 pandemic.

Well-being and sustainability are both umbrella terms with multiple meanings and dimensions. Pursuing innovative solutions that improve health and well-being or address sustainability challenges posed by relevant industries (textile, fashion and apparel, chemical, pharmaceutical, agribusiness, energy, logistics and transportation, etc.) is a collective, open, and multi-stakeholder endeavor that requires cooperation across disciplinary as well as institutional boundaries (Adams et al., 2016; Owen et al., 2013). In this regard, companies are expected to play an active role in the development of sustainable innovations that can generate effective and efficient solutions to collective and global problems such as climate change, food security, and population aging (Franceschini et al., 2016; Lubberink, 2017; Urbaniec, 2018).

Studies on sustainable innovation outline the multidimensional nature of this concept, which is connected to product/process or organizational/business model innovations that aim to reduce or stabilize impacts from a social, environmental, and economic point of view (Boons and Claudy et al., 2010; Lüdeke-Freund, 2013; Schaltegger et al., 2016). Green innovation, eco-innovation, and responsible innovation are just some of the variations that have emerged from the literature on the subject (Di Paola and Russo Spena, 2020; Russo Spena and Di Paola, 2020).

Relatedly, sustainable entrepreneurship is defined as "a unique perspective that combines the creation of environmental, social and economic values, which focuses on ensuring the well-being of future generations" (Terán-Yépez et al., 2020). Companies are called on to combine economic sustainability with environmental and social needs by integrating them into their strategies and balancing the managerial requests for economic viability with these emerging requirements (Belz and Binder, 2017; Claudy et al., 2016). This poses cultural, strategic, and organizational challenges to entrepreneurs and managers (Ploum et al., 2018; Vuorio et al., 2018). Some recent studies have thoroughly analyzed and even expanded the concept of sustainable innovation (Muñoz and Cohen, 2018), and in some cases specific terms have been introduced, such as sustainopreneurship (Aghelie et al., 2016), social entrepreneurship, and environmental entrepreneurship (Anderson , 1998).

Despite the wealth of studies on sustainable innovation and sustainable entrepreneurship, further research is needed to tackle such issues as:

1. their notional definitions towards construct clarity;
2. formulas that combine economic viability with environmental and social ones;
3. contexts and conditions that can promote the development of sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship;
4. entrepreneurial intentions and motivations connected to sustainable business initiatives;
5. knowledge and skills for entrepreneurs and managers to develop sustainable solutions;
6. the propensity of consumers to purchase sustainable products and services; and
7. sustainable entrepreneurial choice’s impact on regional development.

This list of issues is simply illustrative of the multitude of research questions awaiting to be addressed. The aim of this Special Issue is to grasp the complexity and the intersection between sustainable innovation and sustainable entrepreneurship and strengthen and integrate the debate on these topics. In this respect, the Special Issue welcomes submissions covering these topics using multiple theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that investigate actors, processes, and outcomes.

More specifically, we encourage submissions:

• from across different disciplinary domains studying the relationship between entrepreneurship, innovation, and well-being or sustainability;
• conceptualizing innovative sustainability and well-being solutions via theoretical development and synthesis;
• providing fresh empirical insights into and/or thorough reviews of existing bodies of knowledge and/or theoretical developments on the topic; and
• studying phenomena at individual, group, organizational, and/or institutional levels of analysis.

Prof. Dr. Olimpia Meglio
Dr. Nadia Di Paola
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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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.

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• Innovation
• Entrepreneurship
• Sustainability
• Well-being
• Environmental innovation
• Sustainable entrepreneurship
• Sustainable business models
• Social entrepreneurship