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Eco-innovation and Sustainability
Management
12 Organizational Capital
4 Innovations and Institutions
Modelling, Measuring and
An Institutional Perspective on the
Contextualising
Innovative Efforts of Banks and
Edited by Ahmed Bounfour
Insurance Companies
Patrick Vermeulen and Jorg Raab
13 User-Innovation
Barriers to Democratization
5 Knowledge and Innovation in and IP Licensing
Business and Industry Victor R. G. Braun and Cornelius
The Importance of Using Others Herstatt
Edited by Håkan Håkansson and
Alexandra Waluszewski 14 Working on Innovation
Edited by Christophe Midler, Guy
6 Knowledge and Innovation Minguet and Monique Vervaeke
A Comparative Study of the USA,
the UK and Japan 15 Organization in Open Source
Helen Brown Communities
At the Crossroads of the Gift and
7 Industrial Innovation in Japan Market Economies
Edited by Takuji Hara, Norio Evangelia Berdou
Kambayashi and Noboru
Matsushima 16 Theory and Practice of Triple
Helix Model in Developing
8 Managing and Marketing Countries
Radical Innovations Issues and Challenges
Marketing New Technology Edited by Mohammed Saad and
Birgitta Sandberg Girma Zawdie
17 Global Innovation in Emerging 23 Digital Virtual Consumption
Economies Edited by Mike Molesworth
Prasada Reddy and Janice Denegri-Knott
Bart Bossink
First published 2012
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2012 Taylor & Francis
The right of Bart Bossink to be identied as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identication and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bossink, Bart, 1967–
Eco-innovation and sustainability management / by Bart Bossink.
p. cm. — (Routledge studies in innovation, organization
and technology ; 21)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Management—Environmental aspects. 2. Technological
innovations—Environmental aspects. 3. Technological innovations—
Economic aspects. 4. Sustainable development. I. Title.
HD30.255.B67 2012
658.4'083—dc23
2012036202
ISBN: 978-0-415-81872-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-58098-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
Foreword xiii
2 Co-ideation by Leaders 16
3 Co-ideation by Entrepreneurs 28
4 Co-ideation by Champions 40
5 Co-innovation in Teams 51
6 Co-innovation in Projects 62
7 Co-innovation in Businesses 74
Appendices 139
Bibliography 163
Index 173
Figures
Each year, in my graduate classes I ask young and bright business and sci-
ence students: “What will you choose when you get a car for free? Imagine
you get it from me. What would you choose? A gasoline car of a premium
brand with high CO2 emissions or a hybrid car of a less fancy brand but
with an electric motor with signicantly lower CO2 emissions?” The past
three years, the outcome has always been the same: 75 percent chose the
premium air polluter. Yes, the next generation chooses the unsustainable op-
tion. Each year I then start a conversation about the students’ motivations,
and their main reason is always the same. It is: “Premium brand! Premium
brand! Premium brand!” Every year I then immediately change the experi-
ment. I offer them two almost identical versions of the same premium-brand
car and ask them again: “What will you choose when you get the premium-
brand car for free? Imagine you will get it from me. What would you choose?
A gasoline-powered, unsustainable version or a hybrid, more sustainable
version?” Fifty percent still choose the unsustainable version. Yes, these
youngsters are less innovation-minded than I thought. “Why?” I ask them
repeatedly. “Because of the nice sound of a combustion engine. . . . Because
I am used to gasoline cars. . . . Because, what happens when the battery of that
eco-car fails?” These conversations do not confuse me anymore. Over the
past twenty years I have gotten used to these or similar kinds of interactions.
I have, for example, gotten used to the many different points of view that come
up when the sustainability issue is discussed. Positions vary from “nonsense:
you can’t eat sustainability” to “people-planet-prot” to “we must go back to
our natural position on the planet and listen to Mother Earth.” Even people,
who agree that humanity has to become eco-innovative and sustainable can
disagree on how to pursue this goal. Some think we have to inform the con-
sumer. Others say that we have to punish polluters and reward the best of
class. A third group wants to change national policy and regulation. A fourth
group wants to subsidize sustainable initiatives. Another group states that we
do not have to do anything and can simply rely on eco-innovative start-up
rms that will generate a completely new sustainable industry and society.
More than once, I was in the middle of discussions between representatives
of these groups, discussions that sometimes ended up in some kind of trench
warfare, where everybody stuck to his or her own opinion and was trying to
xiv Foreword
convince the other; with a lot of talking and not so much listening. As long
as people do not hurt each other and as long as each group tries to realize
sustainability according to its own ideas, I think that is okay. However, I
think we can do better. I even think that all these people are right at the same
time, that trench warfare is not necessary and that all these opinions and
approaches can be merged in a systematic and coherent approach.
Since sustainability is a phenomenon that has to be pursued in a com-
plex business-societal-and-ecological system that consists of interrelated ele-
ments, it is important to gain an understanding of the elements that make
up the system, of the interplay among the elements and of the behavior of
the system. It is thus of importance to know what the elements of the system
are and how these relate to one another. Therefore, this book explores the
business-societal-and-ecological system in which sustainable innovation has
to be envisioned, conceptualized, realized and improved. It can be of interest
to scholars, students and practitioners who want to gain an insight into the
systematic coherence of drivers of eco-innovation and sustainability in busi-
ness, industry and society. The main concepts of the book are that (1) eco-
and sustainable innovation in business is based on ideas and people who
cooperatively develop these ideas; (2) groups of people, organized in com-
mercial rms, realize these ideas cooperatively and create the innovations
that can conquer the market; and (3) people from governmental, nongov-
ernmental, not-for-prot, research and commercial organizations can build
institutional arrangements that stimulate these sustainable innovations to
grow large and thereby change industry and society.
In the coming years, unsustainable rms can make way for transparent,
clean and value-conscious rms, for eco-innovative and sustainable rms,
rms that deliver value to shareholders and stakeholders, that satisfy per-
sonal and societal needs, and that care for and support people, animals and
the green and blue environment. In the coming time, protable business
models can be those business models that are dedicated to prot in a much
broader sense; the broader sense of private and public well-being, health
and prosperity. Viable, sustainable businesses of the future can be the ones
that grow naturally, serve humanely, provide shelter and care for life and the
living. These businesses can have a well-meant respect for and gratitude to
planet Earth. The future sustainable industrial landscape can be a landscape
of tightly cooperating organizations that concentrate on a fair distribution
of production and consumption among people and on continuous reuse
and reprocessing of materials and energy resources—a motivating vision, I
think. I hope this book will contribute to the realization of this vision.
This book could not have been realized without the support I got from
Routledge and VU University Amsterdam. In particular, I thank Deepti
Agarwal, Terry Clague, Jerilyn Famighetti, Stacy Noto, Laura Stearns, Lau-
ren Verity and Jonas Voorzanger for their invaluable support, friendly advice,
kind answers to my e-mails and results-oriented handling of the manuscript.
Bart Bossink
1 Eco-innovation and Sustainability
1.1 INTRODUCTION
As stated in the introduction, this section introduces the three basic levels at
which eco-innovation and sustainability management take place. The three
levels are co-ideation, co-innovation and co-institutionalization. Coopera-
tion is a key concept at all three levels. Co-ideation stands for all cooper-
ative action of individuals to develop ideas with innovation potential in
sustainability and that can be translated into effective solutions for business.
Co-innovation is the cooperative activity of individuals in organizations to
actually translate the ideas and solutions that originated at the co-ideation
level into protable businesses. Co-institutionalization is the cooperative
effort of public and private parties to integrate the successful sustainable
business proposals and businesses into the institutional environment and let
the new emerging sustainable businesses grow into mature and widespread
businesses with a large impact on industry and society.
The rst of three starting points of this book is that eco- and sustainable
innovation can be conceptualized as a linear process. The co-ideation level
for eco-innovation and sustainability can be perceived as the start of the in-
novation process and that is followed by co-innovation and completed with
co-institutionalization. Second, at the same time, this linear process can also
be seen as cyclical, in the sense that the linear process goes on continuously,
Eco-innovation and Sustainability 3
market
&
society
teams projects
leaders
champions entrepreneurs
co-ideation
co-institutionalization
repeats itself over and over again and by this is a main driver of sustain-
able innovation and continuous improvement in organizations and society.
Third, the eco- and sustainable innovation process can also be seen as in-
terdependent, interactive and transformative, which means that aspects or
elements of the different levels inuence one another continuously. It im-
plies that co-ideation drives co-innovation and co-innovation drives co-
institutionalization but also that, in addition to this, co-innovation also drives
co-ideation and co-institutionalization drives co-innovation. On top of this,
several innovation cycles can occur at the same time and affect one another.
Figure 1.1 visualizes the model of linear, cyclic and interactive eco-
and sustainable innovation through co-ideation, co-innovation and co-
institutionalization. The three managerial levels in the system are symbolized
by the dotted circles. The dotted circle in the center represents the co-ideation
level. The surrounding dotted circle visualizes the co-innovation level. The
outer dotted circle represents the co-institutionalization level. The double-
headed arrows between the dotted circles visualize the linear, circular and
interactive inuence between these levels. The balls in the gure, situated on
the dotted circles, visualize the elements at each level. The co-ideation level
consists of leaders, champions and entrepreneurs; the co-innovation level
4 Eco-innovation and Sustainability Management
consists of teams, projects, businesses and public-private partnerships; and
the co-institutionalization level consists of market and society, knowledge
and technology, and policy and regulation. This section briey introduces
these elements. The next chapters in this book are successively dedicated to
one of these ten elements and delve into more details. The book concludes
with a chapter that interprets the model as a whole.
Co-ideation
Three distinctive individual roles or personal behaviors play a pivotal role
in the co-ideation process: the leader or leadership, the entrepreneur or en-
trepreneurship, and the champion or championship. The leaders, entrepre-
neurs and champions can be seen as the main drivers of the ideation process,
that is, the development of ideas to innovate in sustainability. They also
drive the co-ideation process by cooperating with one another and with
other members of their organizations in order to share and further develop
their thoughts and plans.
Leaders
Individual leadership directs a sustainable innovation team toward new
creative ideas. To direct a creative process, the leader can choose from a
repertoire of leadership styles and skills. A leader who wants to adopt a
charismatic style, for example, can choose to energize colleagues to innovate
and to have an accelerating effect on people’s innovative activity (Murphy
and Ensher, 2008; Paulsen, Maldonado, Callan and Ayoko, 2009). A leader
can also be more oriented toward formal management instruments and put
an emphasis on a strict structuring and control of sustainable innovation
activities of workers in the rm (Abernethy, Bouwens and Van Lent, 2010).
In addition, a leader who wants to act more strategically can use his or her
hierarchical power base to motivate, force or direct teams to innovate in
sustainability (Carmeli, Gelbard and Gefen, 2010). A leader can also choose
to have frequent contact and cooperation with coworkers. A leader who
likes to interact with colleagues can choose to empower others to innovate
and to enable them to become sustainable innovation leaders themselves
and help the ofcial leader (Crevani, Lindgren and Packendorff, 2010).
Entrepreneurs
Not just leadership alone fuels the ideation process. It is also the entrepre-
neur or individual with entrepreneurial spirit who contributes to ideation
and co-ideation. The entrepreneur can be seen as a main force behind the
ideation strategies and processes in organizations. The entrepreneur, for ex-
ample, can take the initiative to develop new products and services and can
be the one who is constantly looking for new ways to make money. It is
often mentioned that he or she always sees where new opportunities to sell
products arise, “smells” where the opportunities for new services are hidden
Eco-innovation and Sustainability 5
and starts projects and ventures to launch products and services and to open
markets (Beveridge and Guy, 2005). It can be said that the entrepreneur-
ial person is driven by the possibilities of successful innovation and is not
scared by the risks of failure (Dixon and Clifford, 2007; Klein Woolthuis,
2009). In today’s business landscape, socially driven entrepreneurship seems
to be becoming a powerful alternative to gain strategic advantage, to mobi-
lize resources, to raise the prole of the organizations involved and to gener-
ate income in new and emerging markets (Di Domenico and Haugh, 2007).
Champions
A third important driver of the ideation and co-ideation process is the in-
novation champion. Innovation champions are often seen as the creative
drivers of innovative ideas and initiatives. An innovation champion, for ex-
ample, endorses innovation by persuading others to join a project or, by
means of a lobby, getting top management on board for an innovative ven-
ture. The champion of innovation talks innovation all the time (Kelley and
Lee, 2010), has the expertise to innovate and likes to generate ideas (Sim,
Grifn, Price and Vojak, 2007). The innovation champion processes infor-
mation that generates new ideas, traces and shares knowledge and looks for
the trends from which to derive new ideas (Coakes and Smith, 2007).
In the literature, these three types of individuals are judged to be the main
drivers behind the ideation process of sustainable innovation. Cooperation
among these three types and cooperation with other colleagues in the orga-
nization can contribute to the co-ideation process in the rm.
Co-innovation
Four organizational forms play a crucial role in the co-innovation process:
the team, the project, the business and the public-private partnership. The
work in and cooperation between individuals in teams, projects, businesses
and public-private partnerships transform the ideas that originate at the co-
ideation level into new sustainable and protable business proposals. They
also bring the ideas to the next level: the co-innovation level, where the ideas
can be realized.
Teams
The leaders, entrepreneurs and champions of eco- and sustainable innova-
tion need to cooperate with others in organizational settings. They need an
organizational context; otherwise, their activities remain unnoticed. They,
for example, need a team of generalists and specialists to adopt their ideas
and develop these into new processes, products and services that actually
change and rejuvenate business. An idea that is promoted by a leader, an
entrepreneurial person or an innovation champion often has to be devel-
oped into something that can be made by the rm. This implies that a team
of colleagues can be assigned by a company to structurally and coherently
6 Eco-innovation and Sustainability Management
work on interesting ideas (Björkman, 2004; Hülsheger, Anderson and Sal-
gado, 2009). They can be asked to separate the creative ideas with market
potential from the ideas that will probably fail (Kratzer, Leenders and Van
Engelen, 2006; Mathisen and Torsheim, 2006). Research indicates that an
innovative team needs to be guided by a culture or spirit that supports the
search for and discovery of practical ways to turn ideas into something that
can be made by the rm (Adarves-Yorno, Postmes and Haslam, 2007; Mar-
tinsuo, 2009).
Projects
Often, projects are used as a main organizational form to structure a com-
pany’s rst attempt to develop a new innovative practice. A varied set of
management principles can be applied to coordinate and control sustain-
ably innovative activities in innovation projects. A project, for example, can
start with a well-prepared project plan and use this as the basic outline for
planning actions, deadlines and deliverables (Dorenbosch, Van Engen and
Verhagen, 2005; Dougherty, 2008). In addition to this, a project organiza-
tion can also choose to plan the innovations step by step and to commit all
participants to a collective schedule. The project can focus on agreements
and on monitoring progress from start to nish (Keegan and Turner, 2002;
Killen, Hunt and Kleinschmidt, 2008). Furthermore, the project organiza-
tion can develop a strategic view of what kind of newness it has to deliver
to the world outside (Newell, Goussevskaia, Swan, Bresnen and Obembe,
2008). It can dene and realize innovation goals that t with the strategy
of the rm (Kenney, 2003; Plambeck and Taylor, 2007). The innovation
project is often used to develop innovations with which rms can (re)gain a
competitive advantage in the marketplace. For this, it is important that the
project members listen to customer demand and use both customer and user
information to translate ideas into processes, products and services with
market potential (Beverland, 2005).
Businesses
The innovation teams and projects are mainly situated in rms. In addi-
tion, rms often run more projects at the same time and have portfolios of
various co-innovative projects. In modern business, it is common practice
for team members to participate in several projects at the same time, for
projects to be linked and for projects to evolve into other projects. In many
cases, different rms cooperate in innovation projects, for example to share
complementary knowledge, to serve larger markets or to gain power in the
competitive eld. Cooperative innovation among several rms, teams and
projects is a complex organizational challenge. Co-innovating rms try to
choose a new innovative direction and usually start to explore the possi-
bilities for going it alone. When that is not possible, companies that do
not want to give up explore the opportunities to co-innovate with others
(Dell’Era and Verganti, 2009; Spithoven, Claryse and Knockaert, 2010).
Eco-innovation and Sustainability 7
They then have to negotiate about the resources each organization has to
bring in and about the revenues each will get in return when the innova-
tions become a commercial success (Nieto and Santamaría, 2007; Vuola and
Hameri, 2006). To organize the co-innovative process, they have to develop
innovation plans with one another and establish joint ventures in which
these innovations are cooperatively developed, built (Rampersad, Quester
and Troshani, 2010; Vuola and Hameri, 2006) and sold (Calia, Guerrini
and Moura, 2007; Van de Vrande, De Jong, Vanhaverbeke and De Roche-
mont, 2009).
Public-Private Partnerships
Co-innovating rms often choose to experiment in a public-private part-
nership before they really decide to enter the market with new processes,
products and services (Harborne and Hendry, 2009; Hendry, Harborne and
Brown, 2010). In a pilot, demonstration or joint public-private experiment,
innovative sustainable options can be tested, developed and prepared for use
in regular business. Public-private partnerships enable governmental and
commercial organizations to experiment and gain experience with sustain-
able issues, technologies and co-innovative procedures and routines (Foxon,
Gross, Chase, Howes, Arnall and Anderson, 2005). Often the government
subsidizes an eco-innovative demonstration project and wants to cooperate
with commercial rms and help them to develop sustainable business. In
return, the government wants companies to invest equally in the project,
for example by means of investments in terms of man-hours, the input of
advanced knowledge and the inclusion of top managers. Public and private
actors who want to sustain a longer-term relationship build public-private
partnerships with clear and longer-term visions on sustainability, often
have some experience and knowledge with eco- and sustainable innovation
and share the same ambitions, for example a desire to create an important
new sustainable product or production process (Garvin and Bosso, 2008).
Public-private partnerships can last for many years and have a remarkable
inuence on the innovativeness of industry. Organizations that participate
in public-private partnerships develop new areas of competence in the eld
of sustainability that can give them a competitive advantage in a sustainable
market of the future.
These four organizational forms are the main drivers of the innova-
tion process for sustainability. Cooperative linkages and ties among teams,
projects, businesses and public-private partnerships contribute to the co-
innovation processes in and among organizations in industry.
Co-institutionalization
Three business environmental forces play an important role at the co-
institutionalization level: market and society, knowledge and technology,
and policy and regulation. Interaction among these business environmental
8 Eco-innovation and Sustainability Management
forces constitutes the co-institutional environment that enables commercial
rms to grow their emerging sustainable businesses into mature ones with a
large impact on industry and society.