Sustainable innovation research methods

Floortje Alkemade

Chapter 17 in Handbook of Sustainable Innovation, 2019, pp 299-309 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: With the shift in focus of innovation policy goals from economic prosperity to sustainability, a need for accompanying methods and indicators arises. This chapter discusses the main methodological approaches used to study sustainable innovation processes, including process-focused and outcome-focused approaches. The chapter calls for (1) increasing efforts to systematically analyse the existing body of case study research to identify common patterns and processes. Despite their limitations, efforts should also continue to collect data and indicators on sustainable innovation with global coverage. (2) Attention for the broader technological, social, and economic context in which sustainable innovation takes place, that is, a systemic perspective is needed. And (3) the use of a wide variety of indicators to evaluate sustainable innovation. This requires mixed method approaches and a further integration of quantitative and qualitative methods as well as a reconnection between the sustainability transitions community and the general innovation sciences community.

Keywords: Business and Management; Economics and Finance; Environment; Innovations and Technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788112567/9781788112567.00028.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:17966_17

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().