2014/03/03 by Ihsen Ketata, Wolfgang Sofka, Christoph Grimpe · 2 citations
Business, Management and Accounting · Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Innovation Diffusion and Forecasting #Innovation Policy and R&D #Innovation and Knowledge Management
paper · doi:10.1111/radm.12052
crossref issued 2014/03/03 · crossref published 2014/03/03 · crossref published-online 2014/03/03 · openalex publication_date 2014/03/03 · crossref created 2014/03/03 · crossref published-print 2015/01/01 · crossref deposited 2023/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02 · crossref indexed 2026/08/02
Over the past decade, sustainable innovation has occupied a top‐ranking position on the agenda of many firms. Sustainable innovation can be broadly defined as an innovation that has to consider environmental and social issues as well as the needs of future generations. Although sustainable innovation provides considerable new opportunities for companies it goes along with an increased complexity. This in turn requires certain organizational routines and capabilities to deal with the upcoming challenges. We explore what the specific driving forces are that increase the degree of sustainable innovation within a firm's innovation activities. We test them empirically for more than 1,100 firms in G ermany and find that firms need to invest in internal absorptive capacities and to draw both broadly and deeply from external sources for innovation. In that sense, investments in employee training turn out to be more important than technological R&D expenditures.