Innovating for sustainability: a framework for sustainable innovations and a model of sustainable innovations orientation

In an environment characterized by growing awareness of environmental sustainability among various stakeholders in organizations, innovating for sustainability can be expected to grow in importance from the standpoints of organizational legitimacy, reputation, and performance. relatedly, a firm’s sustainable innovations capabilities as a source of competitive advantage and the sustainability related attributes of a firm’s product offerings as bases for market segmentation, target marketing, positioning, and differentiation can also be expected to grow in importance. the emergence of sustainability as a major driver of innovation highlights a number of important issues that merit investigation, such as potential avenues for sustainable innovation and sustainable product innovation and factors underlying differences between firms in their commitment to a sustainable innovations orientation. in an attempt to gain insights into these issues, this paper presents (1) a conceptual framework delineating potential avenues for sustainable innovations and (2) a conceptual model delineating a number of firm-related and industry-related antecedents of sustainable innovations orientation, along with performance outcomes of sustainable innovations orientation. implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.