Importance of sustainable innovation in the current economic environment

Abstract

In the current economic environment, businesses must differentiate themselves from competition through a continuous and consistent concern to increase the prosperity of the organization and all the key actors involved in its work, to create a high competitiveness. Innovation and sustainability are two important concepts of impactful programs of research. While at first glance these concepts and approaches may seem at odds, they are synergistic. Sustainable innovations are of growing interest to both managers and researchers. Managers want to understand how to develop these innovations. However, researchers have extensively focused on this question by analyzing the determinants of sustainable innovation development. The purpose of this paper is to determine the importance of sustainable innovation in the context of the new challenges of the globalized economy. In this sense we performed a bibliometric and content analyses of the published articles on sustainable innovation.

Full text

Importance of sustainable innovation in the current economic environment
Andreea MAIER
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, andreeaelenamaier@gmail.com
Sorina CIPLEA
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania sorina.ciplea@ccm.utcluj.ro
Dorina SUCALĂ
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca Romania, dorina.sucala@ccm.utcluj.ro
Dana MORAR
Technical University of Cluj-Napoca Romania, dana.morar@ccm.utcluj.ro
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In the current economic environment, businesses must differentiate themselves from competition through a
continuous and consistent concern to increase the prosperity of the organization and all the key actors involved
in its work, to create a high competitiveness. Innovation and sustainability are two important concepts of
impactful programs of research. While at first glance these concepts and approaches may seem at odds, they are
synergistic. Sustainable innovations are of growing interest to both managers and researchers. Managers want
to understand how to develop these innovations. However, researchers have extensively focused on this question
by analyzing the determinants of sustainable innovation development. The purpose of this paper is to determine
the importance of sustainable innovation in the context of the new challenges of the globalized economy. In this
sense we performed a bibliometric and content analyses of the published articles on sustainable innovation.
: innovation, sustainability, sustainable innovation, business performance

Sustainable development or sustainability is defined as: “meeting the needs of the present generation without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs”. In manufacturing systems, sustainable
product and process innovations, as well as system innovation play an important role to meet the responsibilities
to the environment and society. It is hard to define and measure even conventional innovation in manufacturing
organizations, let alone sustainable innovation. There are some different terminologies and concepts for
sustainable innovation in literature, such as ‘sustainability-oriented innovation’ and ‘sustainability related
innovation’. We prefer the term ‘sustainable innovation’ in this study. Sustainable innovation can reasonably be
defined as “the development of new products, processes, services and technologies that contribute to the
development and well-being of human needs and institutions while respecting the worlds’ natural resources and
regenerative capacity” (Kadia, 2019).
According to the vision of sustainable development, progress integrates immediate and long-term goals, local
and global action, economic and environmental issues, all inseparable. Sustainable development pursues and
strives to find a stable theoretical framework for decision-making in any situation where a human /
environmental report is found, whether it be environmental, economic or social (Olaru, 2016).
Sustainable development is defined as being the way of development that, for now, does not jeopardize the
chances of development for future generations. As a structure, it includes the energy, the environment and the
human resources components. Initially, sustainable development was intended to be a solution to the ecological
crisis caused by the intense industrial exploitation of resources and the continued degradation of the
environment, and primarily seeks to preserve the quality of the environment (Olaru, 2015). The concept has now
expanded on the quality of life in its complexity, both economically and socially. To better align cleaner
production within business and society, organizations can enable sustainability activities as a catalyst for change
(Scroufe, 2017)

We cannot talk about development without innovation, because innovation is the basis for sustainable
development in any field. If we had no ideas, we have nothing to develop! (Vasile, n.d.). An effective
implementation of innovation by the organizations is essential in adding value so that its remain competitive and
also developments in current economic climate. There is some resistance in an effective innovation management
system implementation, but good communication with staff and external partners, as well a leadership focused
on competence and awareness could reduce it.

The research methodology used to achieve the proposed objectives is a systematic literature review. In this
systematic review, transparent and reusable procedures were followed for each step of the research (Littell et al,
2008). The systematization of the research was done in three steps: data collection, data analysis and data
synthesis (Tranfield et al, 2003).
Considering the objective of this research we have conducted a bibliometric and content analyses for the
collected data. The data used in this research was obtained between May and June 2019 and it involved a
multiple criterion search in ISI Web of Science database. The identified articles that didn`t match to this research
topic were excluded from the study. After examining the articles, the step of data analysis, bibliometric merging
and content analysis were performed.
For the search criteria of this study we used the concept of “sustainable innovation” as detailed in Table 1. The
following filters were used: document type and Web of Science Category. Only articles with peer-review were
considered.
Table 1. Search criteria
Topic ” sustainable innovation” 13850
Title ” sustainable innovation” 1228
Web of Science Category Business, management, economics
2466Document type Article, review
Research years Until 2018

It is clear that the concepts of innovation and sustainability are some of the most studied concepts today and it
was just a matter of time until the evolution of the innovation research came across the concept of sustainability
and thus the two concepts were combined in a single concept of “sustainable innovation”. The evolution in time
of the number of articles having this topic is presented in Figure 4.
1975-1990 1991-2000 2001-2010 2011-2018
0
500
1000
1500
2000
0
70
425
1779


Figure 4. The evolution in time of the number of published articles having the topic sustainable innovation
The number of articles having the topic sustainable innovation increase very much in the last period. In the first
studied period from 1975 to 1990 no published articles have been recorded, the first record of an article having
this topic was in the decade 1991-2000, more precisely in 1993 when 3 articles were published, thus in this
decade a number of 70 articles were published. In the next period the number of articles increased six time
reaching 425 articles. The interest for this topic continued the upward trend also after 2011 when the number of
articles increased 4 times to 1770 compared to the previous period. If we maintain the same logic as in case of
published articles on innovation and on sustainability, we can observe that in the last ten years the volume of
information on sustainable innovation increase eight time compared to the whole period before 2008.
As in the case of the initial concepts of innovation and sustainability, the idea of sustainable innovation gained a
lot of interest in the last ten years, for this the evolution of the number of published articles from 2008 to 2018 is
presented in Figure 5.
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
450
Figure 5. The evolution in time of the number of published articles having the topic sustainable innovation in the
period of 2008 and 2018
The analysis of the effective number of published articles on sustainable innovation reveal that before 2008 a
number of 269 articles were published and from 2008 to 2018 a number of 2005 of articles were published. This
evolution can be observed also in the graph from figure 5, if in 2008 were published 52 articles in 2018 the
published articles reached 392 articles. The general evolution in time of the number of published articles on
sustainable innovation is similar to the evolution of the two initial concepts. We can see a slight increase in 2009
compared to 2008, then a first jump in 2010 when the number of items almost doubled compared to 2009. The
rising trend remained after 2010, registering small increases until 2014, with the same year, 2012, when there
was a slight decrease in the number of published articles. A second jump in the evolution of published articles is
noted in 2015 when were published more than nearly 100 articles compare to the year 2014. from 2015 the trend
continued with a significant increase until 2018.
The increase importance of the sustainable innovation topic can be seen also in the number of citations of the
published articles. In Figure 6 is presented the evolution of the number of citations of the articles on sustainable
innovation.

Figure 6. The evolution of the number of citations of articles on sustainable innovation
The trend of the number of citations is obviously increasing, but what is interesting is the evolution of the
effective number of citations, in 1993 there were only 2 citation recorded, then the number of citations gradually
increased exceeding 100 citations in 2000. The number of citations increased and in 2008 there were over 1100
citations and reaching 10236 citations in 2018. If we keep the same division of the period in two parts before
2008 and after 2008, we can see that the number of citations in the last 10 years exceeded 16 times the number
of citations before 2008.
It is obvious that there is an increasing interest in the concept of sustainable innovation in recent years, so that
every year more and more articles are published on this topic. From the point of view of the journal in which
articles on this topic are published in Table 2 we presented the first 20 journals according to the number of
published articles.
Table 2. Top 10 journals according to the number of articles published on "sustainable innovation" topic
Nr.crt Journal Name Article no.
1Sustainability 58
2Journal of Cleaner Production 56
3Business Strategy and the Environment 12
4Managing Environmentally Sustainable Innovation Insights
From The Construction Industry
10
5Ecological Economics 59
6International Journal of Technology Management 40
7Futures 39
8Technology Analysis Strategic Management 39
9Research Policy 37
10 Journal of Business Ethics 30
The Journal with the most published articles having sustainable innovation topic is the journal Sustainability,
which is an international, cross-disciplinary, scholarly, peer-reviewed and open access journal of environmental,
cultural, economic, and social sustainability of human beings. Sustainability provides an advanced forum for

studies related to sustainability and sustainable development (***, 2019 a). The second journal that published
more than 100 papers on sustainable innovation topic is Journal of Cleaner Production, which is an international,
transdisciplinary journal focusing on Cleaner Production, Environmental, and Sustainability research and
practice. The journal serves as a platform for addressing and discussing theoretical and practical cleaner
production, encompassing environmental, and sustainability issues in corporations, governments, education
institutions, regions, and societies (***, 2019b).
If we analyze only the articles that contain in the title the word sustainable innovation the top of the most cited
articles are presented in table 4
Table 4. Top articles on "sustainable innovation title" based on the number of citations
Nr.
crt. Article title Authors Citations
no.
1Strategic niche management and sustainable innovation
journeys: theory, findings, research agenda, and policy
Schot Johan and Geels
Frank W 540
2Grassroots innovations for sustainable development:
Towards a new research and policy agenda
Seyfang Gill and Smith
Adrian 495
3Business models for sustainable innovation: state-of-the-art
and steps towards a research agenda
Boons, Frank; Luedeke-
Freund, Florian 465
4Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Innovation:
Categories and Interactions
Schaltegger, Stefan;
Wagner, Marcus 347
5
Growing grassroots innovations: exploring the role of
community-based initiatives in governing sustainable energy
transitions
Seyfang, Gill; Haxeltine,
Alex 295
6
A strategic design approach to develop sustainable product
service systems: examples taken from the 'environmentally
friendly innovation' Italian prize
Manzini, E; Vezzoli, C 272
7Sustainable innovation, business models and economic
performance: an overview
Boons F., Montalvo C.,
Quist J., and Wagner M. 246
8Building capacity and sustainable prevention innovations: a
sustainability planning model
Johnson K., Hays C.,
Center H., and Daley C. 212
9
Functions of innovation systems as a framework to
understand sustainable technological change: Empirical
evidence for earlier claims
Hekkert, Marko P.; Negro,
Simona O. 163
10 Evolutionary approaches for sustainable innovation policies:
From niche to paradigm? Nill, Jan; Kemp, Rene 160
The most cited article, 540 citations, written by Schot Johan and Geels Frank W entitled "Strategic niche
management and sustainable innovation journeys: theory, findings, research agenda, and policy" was published
in 2001 in the journal of the Technology Analysis & Strategic Management (Johan, 2008). The second most cited
paper, with almost 495 citations, is “Grassroots innovations for sustainable development: Towards a new
research and policy agenda” written by Seyfang Gill and Smith Adrian and it was published by Environmental
Policy journal (Seyfang, 2007).
 !"#
The global concern about environmental care, social awareness and sustainability has increasingly caught the
attention of practitioners and researchers. Considering the current business situation, sustainable development
emerged as a new competitive advantage, including sustainable initiatives and a wider perspective of
profitability that involves environmental and social values (Maier, 2018c). The inclusion of these parameters
within the strategic management of organizations poses the basis for sustainability. To this end, companies are

required to innovate, change their organizational structure and integrate their strategies to overcome barriers and
become more sustainability-oriented (Hernandez-Vivanco, 2018).
Carrillo-Hermosilla et al. (2010), sustainable innovation could be defined as “innovation that improves
sustainability performance”, where such performance includes ecological, economic, and social criteria. As such
criteria differ as a result of spatial, temporal and cultural embeddedness, sustainable innovation will have
different meanings and characteristics in different contexts (Frank Boons, 2013).
There is no precise or established definition for sustainable innovation, reflecting the more general difficulty in
defining the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development. Arthur D. Little (2004) defined
‘sustainability-driven’ innovation as ‘the creation of new market space, products and services or processes driven
by social, environmental or sustainability issues.’ As with general innovation, there is an emerging recognition
that sustainable innovation is not just about new concepts but is about commercialization of technologies,
products and services, and about entrepreneurship (Maier, 2018f).
Sustainability is about expanding the financial bottom line into a triple bottom line, which includes
environmental and social aspects of corporate performance. Hence, sustainability should not be restricted to only
environment practices to gain environmental objectives but it can also facilitate other advantages (e.g., gaining
long-term survival and profitability) in a turbulent market when successfully achieved. In this study,
sustainability is considered an essential practice of a firm that provides environmental, social and economic
benefits to configure the firms’ sustainable competitive position. For instance, Nidumolu et al.(2009) described
that sustainable development is the only way available for enterprises’ growth, decreasing production costs and
generating additional revenues from novel offerings or business expansion (Stig Ottosson, 2016).
Their empirical study found that “sustainability is a mother lode of organizational and technological innovations
that yield both bottom-line and top-line returns.” However, organization performance demonstrates firm
objectives to gain high profits, high sales growth and top market share.
Sustainable development or sustainability is defined as meeting the needs of the present generation without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. In manufacturing systems, sustainable
product and process innovations, as well as system innovation play an important role to meet the responsibilities
to the environment and society. It is hard to define and measure even conventional innovation in manufacturing
organizations, let alone sustainable innovation. There are some different terminologies and definitions for
sustainable innovation in literature, such as ‘sustainability-oriented innovation’ and ‘sustainability related
innovation’. We prefer the term ‘sustainable innovation’ in this study. Sustainable innovation can reasonably be
defined as “the development of new products, processes, services and technologies that contribute to the
development and well-being of human needs and institutions while respecting the worlds’ natural resources and
regenerative capacity” (Hernandez-Vivanco, 2018).
Bos-Brouwersdefines sustainable innovation as “innovations in which the renewal or improvement of products,
services, technological or organizational processes not only delivers an improved economic performance, but
also an enhanced environmental and social performance, both in the short and long term have the capacity to
generate positive social and environmental impacts.” Another definition is “a process where sustainability
considerations (environmental, social, and financial) are integrated into company systems from idea generation
through to research and development (R&D) and commercialization”. This applies to products, services and
technologies, as well as to new business and organizational models. We define sustainable innovation as “any
new or significant improvement of products, services, technological or organizational processes, commercialized
or internally implemented, that not only provide economic benefits but also generate positive social and
environmental impacts” (Tim Stock, 2017).
The discussion about Sustainable Development also requires a closer look at the question of how to achieve this
massive transition towards a new global paradigm. As mentioned, the world and our global society require a shift
towards a more responsible treatment of environmental, social, and economic capital. For this reason, new ideas
and innovations must be created.
The concept of innovation in our present understanding is represented as society’s "engine of growth",
illustrating the strong economic orientation of the concept of innovation (Maier, 2018b). This characteristic has
been solidified notably by the treatises of Joseph Schumpeter at the beginning of the last century, who defined
innovation as “realisation of new combinations” and that this is “the overwhelming fact in the economic history

of the capitalist society“. Since then, the concept of innovation had led to a variety of possible definitions. For
instance, Edison et al. identified 41 possible definitions for this term (Maier, 2018c).
Nevertheless, the core characteristic of the term of innovation can be seen in the origin of the Latin verb of
“innovare”, which can be translated as “renew” (Maier, 2018d). Thus, innovation can be understood as
“renewal”. Renewals are mandatory not only to drive the engine of our economy, but rather to keep the engine of
our planet running. Therefore, the combination of sustainability and innovation is indispensable to realize new
combinations, which can lead to an innovation process tackling the current sustainability challenges. Nidumolu
et al. (2009) described sustainability as the relevant key driver for innovation in the 21st century.
The expressions for combining innovation and sustainability include sustainable innovation, sustainability-
driven innovation and eco-innovation. The concept of eco-innovation was firstly defined by James as "new
products and processes which provide customer and business value but significantly decrease environmental
impact".
Sustainability driven innovation is defined according to a report from Arthur D. Littles (2004) as “the creation of
new market space, products and services or processes driven by social, environmental or sustainability issues.".
The term sustainable innovation was defined by Horbach in the context of Sustainable Development as
following: ”Sustainable innovations not only comprise the environmental dimension but also economic, social
and institutional aspects. They improve the realization of the aims of a sustainable development and represent a
subset of all innovations." In conclusion, the mentioned terms are strongly based on the same understanding and
are focused on a holistic view of sustainability.
The innovation process itself can be divided into several phases, including sub-processes, from the generation of
ideas, to developing the invention, and up to the diffusion process (Maier, 2018e). It can be described by a
multitude of different process models. Cooper describes the innovation process with his commonly used Stage
Gate Model covering five stages. This model is determined as a sequential process chain with precise milestones
for the innovation process marked by so-called gates (Tim Stock, 2017).
There is no precise or established definition for sustainable innovation, reflecting the more general difficulty in
defining the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development.
Arthur D. Little (2004) defined ‘sustainability-driven’ innovation as ‘the creation of new market space, products
and services or processes driven by social, environmental or sustainability issues.’ As with general innovation,
there is an emerging recognition that sustainable innovation is not just about new concepts but is about
commercialization of technologies, products and services and about entrepreneurship.
It can also be about the adoption of new processes and systems at societal level. Sustainable innovation is a
process where sustainability considerations (environmental, social, financial) are integrated into company
systems from idea generation through to research and development (R&D) and commercialization. This applies
to products, services and technologies, as well as new business and organization models.
To describe what a sustainable innovation is and how it is developed, the following definitions are proposed: a
sustainable solution is a solution that has been developed to be a long –lasting, environmentally responsible
solution for the provider (the business), the society and also the users; an innovation is a new solution that has
been “sold” and is used by more than one user, or that is used in at least one use-situation; the innovation
process, done as an innovation project, contains all of the stages from idea generation, development (R&D) and
commercialization, to an implemented solution on the market.
$
The pressing need to equip managers with the tools for innovative solutions to sustainability challenges coupled
with the diversity and fragmentation of the academic literature have made this review necessary. From small to
large companies, from traditional to high-tech companies, increasing innovation performance depends primarily
on their capacity of understanding and finding the best solutions in addressing their innovation limits.

In this research we started from the hypothesis that all changes in society influence the subjects studied by the
researchers and so we studied the evolution of the articles indexed in the ISI Web of Science database, one of the
most important scientific databases in the world, having the topic of sustainable innovation. We can observe very
clearly that the concept of sustainable innovation became more intense studied in the last ten years when the
number of articles exceeded almost 10 times the number of articles published before 2008. So, we can say that in
the last ten years the knowledge related the concept of sustainable innovation has grown very much.
An organization focused on streamlining and optimizing processes and resource utilization has high chances of
becoming competitive in a highly competitive environment. The more organizations are competitive, the more
the regional, even the national, the business environment becomes more competitive, ultimately increasing the
economic competitiveness
#
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