Linking external collaborations, eco-innovation and sustainable growth. An empirical analysis on the Italian manufacturing firms

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the relationships between eco-innovation and business performance by exploring the role of external collaborations as a potential factor explaining the persisting heterogeneity of economic effects of eco-innovation. Basing on a large survey of 3,000 Italian manufacturing firms, the study investigates to what extent collaborations with supply chain and quadruple helix actors, including public institutions, universities and civil society, contribute in sustaining firm’s growth by improving the effectiveness of different types of eco-innovations. We find that the relationship between eco-innovation and business performance is moderated by both supply-chain and quadruple helix collaborations. However, external collaborations with actors of the quadruple helix show a pronounced heterogeneity. While process eco-innovation may in particular benefit from establishing collaborations with public institutions, product eco-innovation relies more on interactions with civil society suggesting that market-driven factors still exert a main role in influencing the market success of this type of eco-innovation.

KEYWORDS:

• eco-innovation
• firm growth
• supply chain collaboration
• quadruple helix
• manufacturing firms
• Italy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). The viwe expressed in the article are those of the author (Marco Pini) and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institution to which he belongs

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

¹ See COM (2010) 614 final.

² In testing the heteroschedasticity the Breusch–Pagan test is significant at 1% (tested on the model A Table 4) thus supporting the choice of using robust standard errors.

³ We tested also a potential complementarity effect between process and product eco-innovation including a variable taking value 1 if the firm invests both in eco-process and in eco-product innovation, but the variable is not statistically significant.