Forms of knowledge and eco-innovation modes: Evidence from Spanish manufacturing firms

Alberto Marzucchi and Sandro Montresor (sandro.montresor@unitn.it)

No 1515, SEEDS Working Papers from SEEDS, Sustainability Environmental Economics and Dynamics Studies

Abstract: This paper investigates the relevance of different forms of knowledge for the firm’s propensity to pursue eco-innovation (EI) strategies. The incidence of different types of internal and external knowledge is disentangled in search of specific EI-modes. We employ panel data on around 4,700 manufacturing firms from the Spanish PITEC dataset. Results show that a Science, Technology, EI-mode (STEI) prevails, though generally in an attenuated way, in the use of internal knowledge, with R&D knowledge more pivotal than some (embodied vs. disembodied) non-R&D one. On the other hand, a synthetic kind of external knowledge, typically drawn from business actors, is more important than the analytical one mainly coming from the “world of science”, suggesting a Doing, Using, Interacting EI-mode (DUIEI) in external terms. Overall, a hybrid EI-mode emerges across the internal and external realm of the firm, with interesting qualifications when specific EI strategies (e.g. cleaner production technologies vs. product eco-innovations) are considered.

Keywords: Eco-innovation; knowledge; innovation modes; DUI; STI (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O31 O32 Q55 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27 pages
Date: 2015-09, Revised 2015-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-cse, nep-eur, nep-ino, nep-knm, nep-sbm, nep-tid and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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http://www.sustainability-seeds.org/papers/RePec/srt/wpaper/1515.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)
http://www.sustainability-seeds.org/papers/RePec/srt/wpaper/1515.pdf Revised version, 2015 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Forms of knowledge and eco-innovation modes: Evidence from Spanish manufacturing firms (2017)
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