Abstract
Innovation, sustainability, and collaboration are all related in their efforts to manage multiple dimensions of organizational and institutional policies and practices. This chapter provides an overview of the three topics and their relative importance to overall advancement of sustainability through innovations. Collaboration is necessary to achieve this goal and various collaborative arrangements and stakeholders in these arrangements are discussed. The chapter also introduces and discusses the various remaining chapters in this book and presents summaries, insights and linkages amongst these chapters.
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Notes
- 1.
Transition theory literature emphasizes the interdependency of institutions and infrastructures defining societal systems and sub-systems, thus creating different types of lock-in that stymie innovation (path dependencies for technological and social developments such as, existing competencies, past investment, habits, regulation, social norms, dominant discourses). In particular, Transition theory argues that the stability and cohesion of societal systems is created and maintained through institutional regimes (sets of practices, rules, norms and shared assumptions that focus on system optimization rather than system innovation (Geels, 2005; Loorbach & Rootmans, 2006)
- 2.
The Pathways to Sustainability framework sees sustainability as a property of non-equilibrium systems allowing the maintenance of basic systems survival functions: equity, wellbeing and environmental quality during dynamics transitions from one equilibrium state to another.
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Acknowledgments
(The Role of the Greening of Industry Network) This book itself stands as an example of a multi-stakeholder collaborative project for the diffusion of innovations related to sustainability. The concept and raw material for this book evolved from a 2008 conference sponsored by the Greening of Industry Network (GIN) in the Netherlands.
Kurt Fischer and Johan Schot began the work of organizing the Greening of Industry Network in 1989, before its official launch at the first GIN conference in November 1991. Thus this book arrives at the 20th anniversary of the conceptualization of GIN. GIN is one of the oldest inter-disciplinary and cross-institutional (multi-stakeholder) organizations focusing on the greening and sustainability of organizations. GIN is a prime example of collaboration and innovation for sustainability. Its website (http://www.greeningofindustry.org/), defines the organization as “an international network of professionals from research, education, business, civil society organizations, and government, focusing on issues of industrial development, environment, and society, and dedicated to building a sustainable future.” Its mission statement reads “The Greening of Industry Network develops knowledge and transforms practice to accelerate progress toward a sustainable society.”
GIN is managed today by an international group of eight coordinators, including original members Kurt Fischer of The George Perkins Marsh Research Institute at Clark University, Theo de Bruijn of the Center for Clean Technology and Environmental Policy (CTSTM) at the University of Twente, and Somporn Kamolsiripichaiporn from Chulalongkorn University. Over the years GIN’s conferences have been held on different continents to accommodate the hundreds of members of the network around the world. The GIN is a vital presence in the global sustainability discourse.
This book is comprised primarily of select papers from the GIN conference held on June 26–28 in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. The main theme of the conference was “Facilitating Sustainable Innovations Sustainable Innovation as a Tool for Regional Development Innovation”. Thus, a broad focus on sustainability, technology, sustainable development, and policy guides the contents of this book. Even though regional development was the topic, many levels of analysis were represented, and the conference provided an excellent opportunity for knowledge transfer, a critical element of collaborative innovation to occur. Only the best papers that fit within the topical objectives of the book were included.
Our thanks goes not only to the coordinators of GIN, but also to Springer Publishers for their confidence and support for this project. Special thanks go to Fritz Schmuhl and Takeesha Moerland-Torpey for their important role in helping us bring this project to successful completion. Finally, of course, without the fine work of the contributors, this book will not be possible. We hope readers will find the chapters useful and insightful.
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Sarkis, J., Cordeiro, J.J., Vazquez Brust, D.A. (2010). Facilitating Sustainable Innovation through Collaboration. In: Sarkis, J., Cordeiro, J., Vazquez Brust, D. (eds) Facilitating Sustainable Innovation through Collaboration. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3159-4_1
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