Sustainable Development Strategies for Product Innovation and Energy Efficiency

Abstract

The interaction between product innovation and companies' activities aimed at improving the energy efficiency of production facilities has been relatively little studied, but is of great relevance to society and companies given the strong focus of governments on grand challenges like climate change, green innovation technologies, and environmental problems in general. This paper utilizes the 2009 European Manufacturing Survey for the Danish subsample including 335 manufacturing firms. Through factor analysis, this paper confirms three main areas of focus of new product development: efficiency considerations, market attention, and greening of innovation. Logistic regression analysis demonstrates that while market attention is important for the development of new products, green aspects of innovation and efficiency considerations are important for production companies wanting to improve their energy efficiency. When these models are combined, the results highlight that energy efficiency moderates the effect of market attention to new product development. This paper therefore finds that aligning product innovation and energy efficiency is a complex and intertwined processfocusing on one may have indirect detrimental effects on the other. These results point to the conclusion that researchers and practitioners in innovation management have to consider more carefully the specificities and interactions of different types of products and process innovations and their environmental implications, and must formulate new, more sustainable managerial practices combining energy efficiency and product innovation.

Determinants of Corporate Climate Change Mitigation Targets in Major United States Companies

“…Further, empirical results point out that there is a growing willingness among business leaders to make bold investments on climate change mitigations (Persson & Rockström, 2011), due to mounting stakeholder (e.g., governments, investors, consumers) pressure and increasing perceptions of opportunities associated with climate change. Indeed, empirical evidences have shown a spectrum of climate strategies employed by companies, including the disclosure of carbon footprints, the introduction of eco-design, the use of low-carbon energy, and the improvement of energy efficiency (Stanny, 2013;Tseng, Tan & Siriban-Manalang, 2013;Rexhäuser and Löschel, 2015;Gerstlberger, Praest Knudsen & Stampe, 2014;Cadez and Czerny, 2016), etc.…”

The Efficiency of Eco-Innovation. Systematic Literature Studies

“…The revenues-related determinants of the efficiency of eco-innovation on the operational level include (Rennings and Zwick, 2003;Arundel and Kemp, 2009;Nill and Kemp, 2009;Weiss, Hoegl and Gibbert, 2011;Wang and Huang, 2007;Gerstlberger, Knudsen and Stampe, 2014): Even though the efficiency of eco-innovation in most companies is perceived from the operational point of view it may not be detached from the determinants at the strategic level. They constitute the wider context which should not be ignored.…”

Clustering product innovators: a comparison between conventional and green product innovators

“…Different authors use a variety of terms to describe new products with environmental implications that are synonyms and combinations of eco, eco-friendly, ecological, green, sustainable, environmental and environmental-friendly with innovation, product innovation, new product (Dangelico, 2016) (Gerstlberger et al, 2014).…”

“…Product innovations with environmental implications should fulfil two goals simultaneously, namely improvement of environmental impact and obtaining commercial performance (Gerstlberger et al, 2014).…”