Capabilities for Sustainable Innovation: An exploratory study in the Manufacturing Industry

This paper makes an early attempt to extend the perspective to the area of sustainable innovation (SI) development by conceptualizing SI approaches, enablers and the organizational capabilities developed by best practices. The qualitative in-depth multiple case study methodology has been carried out within four leading companies in developing sustainable innovation projects covering different company sizes and types of products. Our results show that internal and external organizational capabilities including high internal collaboration, employee involvement, leadership attitude, job rotation, employee management, strong market understanding, active industrial partnership especially with main suppliers, know-how acquisition are the fundamental capabilities for SI development.