Abstract
Systemic innovation can deliver influential sustainability solutions, but it occurs rarely. Increasing sustainability challenges firms to improve the system as a whole through broadening their engagement by game-changing innovations. This empirical case study explores the challenges faced by Finnish business leaders that hold back attempts at systemic innovation for sustainability. The challenges were identified to be caused by structural impediments, uncertainty avoidance and conflicting aims within and between firms. These in turn manifest as cumulative problems in managing opportunity costs, outcome uncertainties and communication problems along the entire innovation process. The study highlights the need for firms to acquire capabilities for sustainability by focusing on building capabilities in open innovation, evaluating and seizing radical opportunities and reconfiguring the organization for systemic innovations for sustainability.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Accenture. 2015. “Special edition: A call to climate action”. The UN Global Compact-Accenture CEO Study. Accessed May 25, 2018. https://www.unglobalcompact.org/library/3551.
Adams, Richard, S. Jeanrenaud, J. Bessant, D. Denyer, and P. Overy. 2016. “Sustainability-oriented innovation: A systematic review.” International journal of Management Reviews 18 (2): 180–205.
Ambec, Stefan, and P. Lanoie. 2008. “Does it pay to be green? A systematic overview.” Academy of Management Perspectives 22: 45–62.
Anttonen, Markku, M. Halme, E. Houtbeckers, and J. Nurkka. 2013. “The other side of sustainable innovation: Is there a demand for innovative services?” Journal of Cleaner Production 45: 89–103.
Behnam, Sarah, R. Cagliano, and M. Grivaljo. 2018. “How should firms reconcile their open innovation capabilities for incorporating external actors in innovations aimed at sustainable development?” Journal of Cleaner Production 170: 950–65.
Bocken, Nancy, S. Short, P. Rana, and S. Evans. 2014. “A literature and practice review to develop sustainable business model archetypes.” Journal of Cleaner Production 65: 42–56.
Boons, Frank, C. Montalvo, J. Quist, and M. Wagner. 2013. “Sustainable innovation, business models and economic performance: An overview.” Journal of Cleaner Production 45: 1–8.
Boström, Magnus, A. Jönsson, S. Lockie, and A. Mol. 2015. “Sustainable and responsible supply chain governance: Challenges and opportunities.” Journal of Cleaner Production 107: 1–7.
Corbin, Juliet, and A. Strauss. 2015. Basics of qualitative research: Techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory. 4th ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Eccles, Robert, I. Ioannou, and G. Serafeim. 2014. “The impact of corporate sustainability on organizational processes and performance.” Management Science 60 (11): 2835–57.
Eisenhardt, Kathleen, and M. Graebner. 2007. “Theory building from cases: Opportunities and challenges.” Academy of Management Journal 50 (1): 25–32.
Eisenhardt, Kathleen, and J. Martin. 2000. “Dynamic capabilities: What are they?” Strategic Management Journal 21: 1105–21.
Elkington, John. 1997. Cannibals with forks: The triple bottom line of sustainability. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers.
Etzkowitz, Henry, and L. Leydesdorff. 2000. “The dynamics of innovation: From National Systems and ‘Mode 2’ to a Triple Helix of university–industry–government relations.” Research Policy 29 (2): 109–23.
Gaziulusoy, A. Idil, and H. Brezet. 2015. “Design for system innovations and transitions: A conceptual framework integrating insights from sustainability science and theories of system innovations and transitions.” Journal of Cleaner Production 108: 558–68.
Hahn, Tobias, F. Figge, J. Pinkse, and L. Preuss, L. 2010. “Trade-offs in corporate sustainability: You can’t have your cake and eat it.” Business Strategy and the Environment 19: 217–29.
Hall, Jeremy, S. Matos, B. Silvestre, and M. Martin. 2011. “Managing technological and social uncertainties of innovation: The evolution of Brazilian energy and agriculture.” Technological Forecasting and Social Change 78 (7): 1147–57.
Hansen, Erik G., F. Grosse-Dunker, and R. Reichwald. 2009. “Sustainability innovation cube—A framework to evaluate sustainability oriented innovations.” International Journal of Innovation Management 13 (4): 683–713.
Helfat, Constance, and M. Peteraf. 2003. “The dynamic resource-based view: Capability lifecycles.” Strategic Management Journal 24: 997–1010.
Inigo, Edurne, and L. Albareda. 2016. “Understanding sustainable innovation as complex adaptive system: A systemic approach to the firm.” Journal of Cleaner Production 126: 1–20.
Lichtenthaler, Ulrich. 2011. “Open innovation: Past research, current debates, and future directions.” Academy of Management Perspectives 25 (1): 75–93.
Lichtenthaler, Ulrich, and E. Lichtenthaler. 2009. “A capability-based framework for open innovation: Complementing absorptive capacity.” Journal of Management Studies 46 (8): 1315–38.
Lin, Yuan-Hsu, and M.-L. Tseng. 2016. “Assessing the competitive priorities within sustainable supply chain management under uncertainty.” Journal of Cleaner Production 112: 2133–44.
Lockett, Helen, M. Johnson, M. Bastl, and S. Evans. 2011. “Product service systems and supply network relationships: An exploratory case study.” Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management 22: 293–313.
Lopez, Rodriguez, A. Sakhel, and T. Busch. 2017. “Corporate investments and environmental regulation: The role of regulatory uncertainty, regulation-induced uncertainty, and investment history.” European Management Journal 31 (1): 91–101.
Lozano, Rodriguez. 2015. “A holistic perspective on corporate sustainability drivers.” Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management 22(1): 32–44.
Markad, Jochen, R. Raven, and B. Truffer. 2012. “Sustainability transitions: An emerging field of research and its prospects.” Research Policy 41: 955–67.
Medeiros, Janine, J. Ribeiro, and M. Cortimiglia. 2014. “Success factors for environmentally sustainable product innovation: A systematic literature review.” Journal of Cleaner production 65: 76–86.
Mignon, Ingrid, and A. Bergek. 2016. “System- and actor-level challenges for diffusion of renewable electricity technologies: An international comparison.” Journal of Cleaner Production 128: 105–15.
Mylan, Josephine, F. Geels, S. Gee, A. McMeekin, and C. Foster. 2015. “Eco-innovation and retailers in milk, beef and bread chains: Enriching environmental supply chain management with insights from innovation studies.” Journal of Cleaner Production 107: 20–30.
Nidumolu, Ram, C. Prahalad, and M. Rangaswami. 2009. “Why sustainability is now the key driver of innovation.” Harvard Business Review 8 (9): 56–64.
Noppers, Ernst, K. Keizer, M. Bockarjova, and L. Steg. 2015. “The adoption of sustainable innovations: The role of instrumental, environmental, and symbolic attributes for earlier and later adopters.” Journal of Environmental Psychology 44: 74–84.
Quist, Jaco, and A. Tukker. 2013. “Knowledge collaboration and learning for sustainable innovation and consumption: Introduction to the ERSCP portion of this special volume.” Journal of Cleaner Production 48: 167–75.
Roscoe, Samuel, P. Cousins, and R. Lamming. 2016. “Developing eco-innovations: A three stage typology for supply networks.” Journal of Cleaner Production 112: 1948–59.
Schaltegger, Stefan, and M. Wagner. 2011. “Sustainable entrepreneurship and sustainability innovation: Categories and interactions.” Business Strategy and the Environment 20 (4): 222–37.
Schiederig, Tim, F. Tietze, and C. Herstatt. 2012. “Green innovation in technology and innovation management—An exploratory literature review.” R&D Management 42 (2): 180–92.
Seebode, Dorothea, S. Jeanrenaud, and J. Bessant. 2012. “Managing innovation for sustainability.” R&D Management 42(3): 195–206.
Silvestre, Bruno. 2015. “A hard nut to crack! Implementing supply chain sustainability in an emerging economy.” Journal of Cleaner Production 96: 171–81.
Slater, Stanley, J. Mohr, and S. Sengupta. 2013. “Radical product innovation capability: Literature review, synthesis, and illustrative research propositions.” The Journal of Product Innovation Management 31 (3): 552–66.
Teece, David. 2007. “Explicating dynamic capabilities: The nature and microfoundations of (sustainable) enterprise performance.” Strategic Management Journal 28: 1319–50.
Teece, David. 2017. “Business models and dynamic capabilities.” Long Range Planning 51 (1): 40–49.
Teece, David, G. Pisano, and A. Shuen. 1997. “Dynamic capabilities and strategic management.” Strategic Management Journal 18: 509–33.
Van den Bosch, S. J. M., J. Brezet, and P. Vergragt. 2015. “How to kick off system innovation: A Rotterdam case study of the transition to a fuel cell transport system.” Journal of Cleaner Production 13: 1027–35.
Vezzoli, Carlo, F. Ceschin, J. Diehl, and C. Kohtala. 2015. “New design challenges to widely implement ‘Sustainable Product-Service Systems’.” Journal of Cleaner Production 97: 1–12.
Wesseling, Joeri H., and A. Van der Vooren. 2017. “Lock-in of mature innovation systems: The transformation toward clean concrete in the Netherlands.” Journal of Cleaner Production 155: 114–24.
Winter, Sidney. 2003. “Understanding dynamic capabilities.” Strategic Management Journal 24: 991–95.
Xavier, Amanda, R. Naveiro, A. Aoussat, and T. Reyes. 2017. “Systematic literature review of eco-innovation models: Opportunities and recommendations for future research.” Journal of Cleaner Production 149: 1278–302.
Yin, Robert. 2014. Case study research: Design and methods. 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Zimmerling, Eric, H. Purtik, and I. Welpe. 2017. “End-users as co-developers for novel green products and services—An exploratory case study analysis of the innovation process in incumbent firms.” Journal of Cleaner Production 162: S51–S58.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Tura, N., Mortimer, G., Kutvonen, A. (2019). Exploring the Pitfalls of Systemic Innovations for Sustainability. In: Bocken, N., Ritala, P., Albareda, L., Verburg, R. (eds) Innovation for Sustainability. Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business In Association with Future Earth. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97385-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97385-2_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97384-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97385-2
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)