Integrating services and tools in an ICT platform to support eco-innovation in SMEs

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) represent a key vector to introduce and diffuse eco-innovation in the market, because of their relevance to both the environment and the European gross domestic product. As they are often focused on continuous and incremental innovation of their products, the optimization of product eco-innovation paths can be considered a central aspect of their business. All phases of this process (awareness building and training, analysis, product (re)design and communication/certification) need to be supported to overcome the existing barriers, which mainly consist of lack of experience inside SMEs and cost of information, data, and tools. Information and Communication Technologies can play a role to lower some of the barriers, but currently the numerous services and tools available cover only specific aspects of the whole process, and are often too complex for their direct use by SMEs. The multilingual web-based platform Ecosmes.net here presented aims to integrate user-friendly and free-of-charge services and tools to support all phases of the product eco-innovation process in SMEs. The approach behind mainly consists in developing tailored, simplified tools, and in carrying out ''homogeneous product group'' studies, as a basis for the production of pre-elaborated information and data to be used with the tools developed. Experience gained in 5 years of applications has confirmed that Ecosmes.net can facilitate the start-up of the product eco-innovation process, but has also shown that not all the potentialities have been fully exploited. Moreover, as the eco-innovation market is not developed enough to allow economic management of these kinds of online services, a public initiative is advocated to face this challenge and support a continuous upgrading. Modes and opportunities are proposed and discussed in the conclusion.

Eco-innovative Practices for Sustainable Consumption and Production: What are the Possible Benefits for Companies?

“…There is a general lack of financial and economic incentives, together with an overall lack of administrative simplification strategies and regulation relief [61]. There is also a common lack of integration among different environmental and research policies in business activities, along with a general lack of knowledge of how to spread SCP approach among enterprises and Local Authorities.…”

“…In particular, it fosters a proper management of IAs and helps in overcoming the problem of the small dimensions of Mediterranean SMEs, the real giants of the European economy [61], contributing to create a cooperative climate which helps the identification of synergies at Area level. Innovative IAs, in fact, have been confirmed as the most favorable contest to implement and test the principles and tools of Industrial Ecology due to the possibility not only of sharing infrastructures and services for increasing the production and minimizing costs, but also [54,55]:…”

Approaching the Sustainable Development Practices in Mountain Tourism in the Romanian Carpathians

“…In this context, there is obvious no wish to change current practices. This downfall may be overcome by developing managers' information systems and dissemination of experiences in the field in order to convince them that there are solutions for each tourism operator, regardless of size or comfort category [62]. SMEs, in general, invest insufficiently in research and development for innovation purposes, including information acquisition and lack the internal capabilities and resources necessary to monitor environmental issues [63] (p. 419).…”

ICT-based solution approach for collaborative delivery of customised products

“…(b) to implement an ICT-based communication framework to contribute to real time monitoring and management of collaborative business processes for mutual benefit Several researches have been done in order to address ICT framework within business network. Buttol et al (2012) implemented ICT and online services to support SMEs on a path of product eco-innovation within hierarchical business network. ICT requirements analysis for enterprise networks are extensively discussed by Afsarmanesh and Thamburaj (2012), where they proposed the common ICT platform and the tools to enhance the functionality effectiveness for coworking and co-innovation among the collaborative stakeholders.…”