Eco-Innovation, Knowledge Capital and the Evolution of the Firm

Blandine Laperche and Dimitri Uzunidis ()

The IUP Journal of Knowledge Management, 2012, vol. X, issue 3, 14-34

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to study the place of eco-innovation in industrial firms’ current strategy and to understand how they achieve this change in their technological trajectory. This is mainly based on the interviews conducted between 2009 and 2011 within eight corporations settled in France. The study revelaed that in a context of crisis, firms consider eco-innovation as a new path which generates growth in future. To refocus their strategy, ‘knowledge capital’, a concept which is considered as a tool to study the dynamic capabilities needed to achieve a change, was reorganized. The capability to develop collaborative research appears central to develop eco-innovation for two reasons: the necessity to share the costs and the risks of development; and the necessity to comply with the various aims and objectives of the stakeholders involved in this type of innovation oriented towards sustainability. Even if the importance of collaboration to develop eco-innovation is confirmed in the literature on eco-innovation, the study is based on eight cases, and is aimed at extending to develop the understanding of eco-innovation development at the firm level. This will also be done notably by including small firms in the population in order to understand the role of size in the development of capabilities needed for scientific and technological networks management. This paper contributes to the literature on the capabilities needed to achieve change; improves the analysis of the roles of collaboration in the case of eco-innovation; and illustrates these ideas with original cases.

Date: 2012
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