Achieving sustainable development by collaborating in green product innovation

Journal article, 2017

Collaboration in green product innovation (GPI) is becoming increasingly important, and research on such innovation has grown in recent years. This study reviews literature on external collaborations in GPI to investigate drivers, inter-organisational factors and intra-organisational factors for such collaborations. The review includes a total of 67 papers. Survey studies and case studies are the methodologies applied most in the reviewed papers. The most common collaborators are suppliers and customers. Drivers include economic factors, regulations, customer demand, competitiveness and firm performance. Numerous inter-organisational collaboration factors are presented and summarised in terms of partner selection, relationship management, knowledge access and agreements. Intra-organisational factors mainly concern cross-functional collaboration, capabilities and internal practices. Implications for policy and practitioners are presented.