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The evolution of sustainable The evolution

of sustainable
innovation: from the past to innovation

the future
Giovanna Afeltra, Sayed Alireza Alerasoul and Fernanda Strozzi
LIUC Carlo Cattaneo University, Castellanza, Italy
Received 26 February 2021
Revised 5 July 2021
Abstract Accepted 23 August 2021
Purpose – Over the last few decades, more emphasis has been placed on those innovations that can reconcile
economic, social and environmental goals in order to achieve a “win-win-win” situation. This paper aims to
systematise the scientific literature on Sustainable Innovation as a broad field in order to identify the most
relevant scholars and their significant contributions as well as existing lines of research. Finally, future
research directions are suggested.
Design/methodology/approach – A novel methodology, the Systematic Literature Network Analysis, has
been applied. By using a dynamic approach to the traditional Systematic Literature Review, the present review
investigates the creation, transfer, and development of knowledge throughout the epistemic community of
Sustainable Innovation.
Findings – Starting from a sample of 1,108 articles, the critical assessment of the results detected five main
themes: (1) “the role of Regulation, Market and Technology”; (2) “Eco-Innovation determinants and firm specific
factors and the debate between corporate environmental performance and corporate financial performance”;
(3) “Green innovation and internal and external drivers”; (4) “The strategic determinants of green (non-green)
innovation”; (5) “The interplay between policy, regulations and the green innovation”.
Practical implications – From a practitioner’s perspective, this study provides an objective view on the
current internal, external drivers and strategic determinants of sustainability-oriented innovations and
relevant studies that can guide managers in their decision-making processes and enhance sustainable
innovation performance.
Originality/value – This study is a first attempt to unveil the evolution of knowledge in the field of
sustainable innovation by utilizing bibliometric tools.
Keywords Sustainable innovation, Eco-innovation, Environmental innovation, Green innovation,
Systematic literature review
Paper type Literature review

1. Introduction
Over the last few decades, more emphasis has been placed on how innovations can help
reconcile economic, social and environmental goals with “win-win-win” strategies towards
sustainability (Elkington, 1994; Eccles et al., 2013). Several studies have attempted to better
define the concept of “Sustainable Innovation” (SI) by adopting different views, such as a
process view with interactions and transformations by stakeholders and managers (Aka,
2019). A significant strand of research has investigated how business firms’ technological
activities develop new green products and processes and how these are shaped by
environmental policies, R&D policies and firm’s characteristics (Castellacci and Lie, 2017).
Previous studies have tried to systematise the literature on the drivers and motivations that
lead companies to adopt Eco-Innovations (EIs) (Montalvo Corral, 2003; Corral, 2003; Bossle

The authors thank Professor Frank Boons (University of Manchester), Professor Valentina De Marchi
(University of Padua) and Professor Alessandro Creazza (LIUC University) for the valuable comments
on the improvement of the paper in the initial and final stage of the study. The authors also thank the
European Journal of Innovation
participants of the conference “Competitive Renaissance through Digital Transformation” organized by Management
the University of Pavia, which provided other meaningful suggestions for the last improvement of the © Emerald Publishing Limited
1460-1060
manuscript. DOI 10.1108/EJIM-02-2021-0113
EJIM et al., 2016) or on the determinants of EIs in relation to a specific context, such as
manufacturing SMEs (Klewitz and Hansen, 2014), or to find the main path in the link between
environmental regulation and firm competitiveness (Barbieri et al., 2016), using different
keyword strings and databases. Cillo et al. (2019) tried to systematise the previous literature
under three critical perspectives: internal managerial, external relational and performance
evaluation, and He et al. (2018) reviewed the literature on eco-innovation in the corporate
environment. This study, on the other hand, represents a more recent and comprehensive
literature review, placing more attention on the broader concept of SI, which includes the
social dimension as well as the environmental and economic dimensions, and on how it links
with related concepts (e.g. eco-innovation, green innovation) with a novel approach to
determine future trends and the current state of the art. The aim of this study is to define the
main streams and evolution of SI and related concepts at firm level together with the
evolution of the determinants of SI and firms’ characteristics that enable greater corporate
and financial performance as well as a competitive advantage. We further contribute to the
existing body of literature identifying the most relevant scholars and their significant
contributions in the field of SI. There is also a call for more plurality and diversity to the
insights derived from literature reviews (Jones and Gatrell, 2014; Gatrell and Breslin, 2017;
Hakala et al., 2020). Therefore, the novel Systematic Literature Network Analysis (SLNA)
method is applied to provide an overview of the current body of knowledge; this includes a
primary determination of the main flow of knowledge over time and ultimately the
application of the Kleinberg burst detection for the identification of the emerging topics. This
methodology, introduced by Colicchia and Strozzi (2012), combines the Bibliographic
Network Analysis (BNA) and the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) to investigate the
creation, transfer and development of knowledge throughout the SI epistemic community.
This approach was chosen to identify past trends and to anticipate future directions in a
scientific and more objective way (Colicchia et al., 2019; Colicchia and Strozzi, 2012; Kajikawa
et al., 2007). This method has been successfully experimented within other fields (Milella et al.,
2021; Ciano et al., 2019; Comerio and Strozzi, 2019; Strozzi et al., 2017); however, it has not yet
been applied to the broader field of SI. The specific set of keywords proposed is based on a
well-developed terminology that has been accepted and used by most researchers in the field
(Charter and Clark, 2007; Dias Angelo et al., 2012; Hojnik and Ruzzier, 2016; Schiederig et al.,
2012; Siqueira and Pitassi, 2016). Furthermore, for the appropriate application of this method,
the scope of the study is defined by referring to the CIMO framework, which is designed to
answer the questions on the Context, Intervention, Mechanism and Outcome of review
(Denyer and Tranfield, 2009). By applying different analyses, this study seeks to answer:
(RQ1) what are the research themes that have characterised the field of SI over time? And
(RQ2) what are the directions towards future research based on the existing themes and
streams in the field? By applying this approach, the main path of knowledge in the field is
detected, and by critically assessing the relationships between concepts, several themes of
research have emerged. In general, this study tries to contribute to the literature on SI by
addressing the existing key lines of research for each topic, identifying the managerial and
organisational concepts that have co-occurred more frequently with these topics and
determining how they have evolved together over time and ultimately addressing the future
avenues of research in the field.

2. Sustainable innovation theoretical background

Before reviewing the literature, it was necessary to better clarify the concept of “Sustainable
Innovation” to understand the literature that should be included. Therefore, we focus on
discussing the different notions and how these can be used interchangeably. In the following,
we briefly propose a number of widely cited and accepted definitions.
 Starting with Pezzey (1997) “Innovation is sustainable when the innovation process which The evolution
contributes to the sustainable development ensures that the current generation’s of sustainable
consumption is less than or equal to the maximum consumption of the generations coming
in the following years, on the basis of the production opportunities available at present”. SI
innovation
is also generally defined as “the development of new products, processes, services and
technologies that contribute to the development and well-being of human needs and
institutions while respecting natural resources and regeneration capacities” (Tello and Yoon,
2008, p. 165). Boons et al. (2013) provided an interpretation starting from the EI definition by
Carrillo-Hermosilla et al. (2010), which states that SI is the “innovation that improves
sustainability performance”, which includes social, ecological and economic criteria. Bos-
Brouwers (2010, p. 422) has also described SI as “innovations in which the renewal or
improvement of products, services, technological or organisational processes delivers not
only improved economic performance, but also an enhanced environmental and social
performance”.
We also identified a set of concepts commonly used in the SI literature as eco-innovation,
sustainability-oriented innovation and green innovation (I~ nigo and Albareda, 2016), which
are usually used interchangeably.
Kemp and Pearson (2007, p. 4) define EI as “the production, assimilation or exploitation of
a product, production process, service or management or business method that is novel to the
organisation (developing or adopting it) and which results, throughout its life cycle, in a
reduction of environmental risk, pollution and other negative impacts of resources use
(including energy use) compared to relevant alternatives”.
Oltra and Saint Jean (2009, p. 567) define environmental innovation as “innovation that
consists of new modified processes, practices, systems and products which benefit the
environment and so contribute to environmental sustainability”. Chen et al. (2006, p. 333)
define green innovation as “hardware and software innovation that is related to green
products or processes, including the innovation in technologies that are involved in energy-
saving, pollution-prevention, waste recycling, green product designs, or corporate
environmental management”. Green innovation is also generally divided into product and
process innovations (Chen et al., 2006).
According to Adams et al. (2016, p. 181) Sustainability-oriented Innovation “involves
making intentional changes to an organization’s philosophy and values, as well as to its
products, processes or practices, to serve the specific purpose of creating and realizing social
and environmental value in addition to economic returns”.
The most prominent notions adopted in the literature to describe those innovations that
aim to reduce environmental burden are “green”, “eco”, “environmental” and “sustainable”.
However, green innovation, environmental innovation, and eco-innovation do not address the
social dimension of sustainable development as much as SI. We aim to provide an overview of
the existing body of literature in the field of SI and identify the most relevant scholars in this
field and their significant contributions.

3. Pertinence of a systematic review on SIs

Given the heterogeneity of topics, perspectives and factors related to SIs, a systematisation of
extant findings is required to enable a more objective overview of the state of the art for either
academic or practice purposes. The extensive scientific literature around eco/environmental/
sustainable/green/sustainable oriented innovations encouraged scholars to review and
integrate the SI studies in a systematic way. Several systematic reviews already synthesized
evidence on the importance of innovation for sustainability. However, researchers mainly
focus either on green, eco and environmental innovation or SI and rarely together.
Furthermore, none of the more recent studies have considered SI as a broader concept that
EJIM can represent the whole field under investigation (Boons and McMeekin, 2019; Charter and
Clark, 2007; Schiederig et al., 2012) applying the SLNA methodology.
For example, Adams et al. (2016) conducted a review on sustainability-oriented
innovation; however, they examined innovation on a journey to sustainability and
considered only “sustainab* AND innovation” as a search string. Hojnik and Ruzzier
(2016) reviewed the drivers and the diffusion of eco-innovation at a macro and meso level.
The keyword search for articles contained “eco-innovation”, “ecological innovation”, “green
innovation” or “environmental innovation” in relation to “determinants”, “drivers” or
“antecedents”. The results revealed that the resource-based and institutional theories
constitute the theoretical foundations, and the common drivers for different eco-innovation
types are regulations, market pull factors, EMS and cost savings. Schiederig et al. (2011)
conducted a review of 560 publications using the search strings “green innovation”, “eco-
innovation”, “environmental innovation” and “sustainable innovation”, with a focus on
innovation management. However, this study included only publications up to 2010.
Recently, Cillo et al. (2019) reviewed 69 publications on sustainable innovation to explore the
sustainable innovations in which firms engage to reconcile economic, environmental and
social goals, organising articles according to three managerial perspectives: internal, external
relational, and performance evaluation. Our review includes 1,108 relevant papers whose
selection is determined by several criteria that are described in the following section.
These previous reviews differ from our review in several ways. Some mentioned studies
strictly focused on sustainable innovation and hybrid organisations without considering
some other important concepts such as eco-innovation and green innovation; others are less
recent studies and the results lack many recent observations or were conducted applying
different approaches. We provide a fresh look at SI and try to respond to the need for novel
approaches in the field by applying the SLNA, which has been experimented within other
fields (e.g. Khitous et al., 2020; Ciano et al., 2019; Comerio and Strozzi, 2019; Strozzi et al., 2017;
Colicchia and Strozzi, 2012) but has not yet been applied to this field. Specifically, we aim to
review the broader field of SI at firm level following the strong tradition of the general field of
innovation where innovation takes place in the context of private firms (Boons and
McMeekin, 2019).

4. Methodology
4.1 Systematic literature network analysis (SLNA)
The data were collected from Scopus, which is one of the leading bibliographic databases
(Zhao and Strotmann, 2015). The SLNA consists of two steps; the first is the SLR, which
differs from the traditional narrative reviews because it adopts a replicable, transparent and
scientific process which leads to an exhaustive literature search for all available relevant
published studies (Tranfield et al., 2003). In carrying out the SLR we followed the steps
suggested by Denyer and Tranfield (2009): the scope of the analysis; question formulation
through the CIMO approach (Denyer et al., 2008); locating studies and the selection and
evaluation of the studies. The second step of SLNA is a bibliographic network analysis
(BNA), which combines a Citation Network Analysis (CNA), the Global Citation Score (GCS)
and the Burst detection of author keywords.

5. The systematic literature review (SLR): the first phase of SLNA

5.1 Scope of the analysis
At the beginning of 2020 (January–February) we searched the keyword string in Scopus in
the “Title” field to select the papers having “Sustainable Innovation” and other synonyms as
the main target of research. As a result the final set of keywords used in combination includes
“sustainable innova*”; “sustainability oriented innova*”; “innova*sustainability”; “green The evolution
innova*”; “environmental innova*”; “eco*innova*”; “green product innova*”; “green process of sustainable
innova*” (Figure 1). We considered the “Title” field in order to select only those papers that
have these specific keywords as the primary goal of their study (Boons and L€ udeke-Freund,
innovation
2013; Bossle et al., 2016; Strozzi et al., 2017) and further filters. To ensure replicability of the
analysis, all the steps are shown in Figure 1. We further checked the relevance of papers to the
topics of our interest, so as not to include misleading papers, and the final sample obtained
was made of 1,108 documents. An initial descriptive analysis of the sample shows that most
of the studies included the term eco* innovation in titles, followed by green, environmental
and sustainable innovation (Figure 2). We also extracted the journals publishing the most in
the field, see Table 1.

Figure 1.
Sample extraction
procedure

Keyword Distribution
2.2% 2.7% 0.8% 0.5%

18.5%
17.2%

22.8%
35.4%

Figure 2.
Environmental innovation Green innovation Eco*innovation
Distribution of
keywords selected for
Sustainable innovation Sustainability-oriented innovation Green product innovation the enquiry on Scopus
Green process innovation Innovation sustainability
EJIM Journal No. of publications Rank

Journal of cleaner production 142 1

Sustainability (Switzerland) 83 2
Business strategy and the environment 63 3
Technological forecasting and social change 31 4
Corporate social responsibility and environmental management 22 5
Ecological economics 18 6
Research policy 15 7
Industry and innovation 14 8
Journal of business ethics 13 9
Environmental engineering and management journal 11 10
European journal of innovation management 10 11
Technology analysis and strategic management 10 12
International journal of innovation and sustainable development 10 13
Sustainable development 8 14
Innovation: management, policy and practice 8 15
Resources, conservation and recycling 7 16
Energy policy 7 17
Table 1. International journal of environmental research and public health 7 18
The most publishing International journal of production economics 6 19
journals in the field Journal of environmental planning and management 6 20

6. The bibliographic network analysis (BNA): the second phase of SLNA

6.1 Citation network and the most significant connected component analysis
The second phase of the SLNA includes a Bibliographic Network Analysis (BNA), which
begins with a Citation Network Analysis (CNA). This is used for the identification of the
dynamics of our field of interest. This analysis has seen an increasing application during the
last few years because of its strength in providing meaningful insights (Barbieri et al., 2016;
Colicchia et al., 2019; Dawson et al., 2014). The citation network represents a network of the
research field, where nodes are papers and links are citations between them. The result of this
analysis is the Main Path (MP) network, which represents the flow of knowledge from the
oldest reference to the newest one in the most significant connected components. Each arrow
in the citation network goes from a cited paper to a citing paper. The citation network is
defined as a set of nodes connected by links (citations), and depending on the citation links, it
is possible to have some connected components with only a few nodes and some others with a
higher number of nodes. Since CNA is a method based on citations, the isolated nodes are
excluded from the analysis as they are not connected. Moreover, it gives the best results when
connected components are composed of many nodes, such as in this study because the
amount of information that can be extracted is much larger than that emerging from small
components (few connected nodes).
6.1.1 The main flow of knowledge: the main path (MP). In this study, the biggest connected
component is made up of 829 papers which constitute 74.82% of the initial sample. Figure 3
shows the citation network, which is characterised by one main connected component (circled
in green), several nodes and some other minor connected components (circled in blue).
To detect the existence of a leading trend in the evolution of scientific results, we extract
the Main Path component, which gives a set of connected papers that are the most relevant
published at different times and which constitute the backbone of the research tradition
(Lucio-Arias and Leydesdorff, 2008; Niazi et al., 2019; Strozzi et al., 2017). Therefore, the MP
highlights those articles that are based on prior studies and which transfer the knowledge
to later contributions, constituting the “skeleton” of the research field under investigation.
 The evolution
of sustainable
innovation
The biggest connected
component

Figure 3.
The biggest connected
component extracted
from the citation
network

The steps to perform the MP analysis using Pajek are shown in Figure 4; this includes the
computation of weights for each arc to identify the MP by looking for the weighted network.
The Search Path Count (SPC) weights are used for CNA, which is a relatively simpler weight
assignment scheme compared to Search Path Link Count (SPLC) and Search Path Node Pair
(SPNP) introduced by Batagelj (2003). Aware of the existence of several subareas, we also
attempt to group the papers within appropriate communities, applying the Louvain
algorithm of Pajek to optimize the modularity (Comerio and Strozzi, 2019). The final MP is a
weighted network of the biggest component, which represents the main streams of the
literature in the area of SI and related concepts and it is made up of 32 papers (Figure 5),
ranging from 1994 till the most recent.

6.2 Discussion on the flow of knowledge

After extracting the MP component (the process is illustrated in Figure 4), the next step is to
analyse the communities in order to extract the essence of each theme. It is worth mentioning
that each community is born from the previous linked study of the MP, as illustrated in
Figure 5, which represents the chronological evolution of the flow of knowledge in the field.
6.2.1 Theme 1: “The role of regulation, market and technology”. Theme 1 of the MP deals
with EI determinants by investigating the role of Regulation, Market pull and Technology
push. Since the study by Green et al. (1994), companies have been innovating technologically

Search Path Count

(SPC)

Quantification of the
Search Path Link Count Key route Main Path
citation traversal 32 Papers
(SPLC) method
weights

Figure 4.
Search Path Node Pair The main path
(SPNP)
extraction process
 EJIM

Figure 5.

of the biggest
connected component
The main path analysis
Green K. (1994)
Theme 1: “The role of Regulation, Market

Rennings K. (2000) and Technology”

Pickman H.A. (1998)

Rennings K. (2006)

Brunnermeier S.B
(2003)

Horbach J. (2008)
Oltra Y. (2009)

Ziegler A. (2009) Theme 2: “EI determinants and firms’

Lee K.H. (2013)
Theme 4:”The strategic
Bonte W. (2013) Horbach J. (2012) specific factors and the debate between
determinants of green (non-green)
Cuerva M.C (2014)
corporate environmental performance
innovation” Cainelli G. (2013)
(CEP) and corporate financial
Cainelli G. (2015) Ghisetti C. (2014)
performance (CFP)”

Borghesi S: (2015)

Lee
Castellacci F. (2017) & Min (2015)

Li et
al. 2017
Theme 5: “The interplay between Theme 3: “Green innovation and
Kiefer C.P. (2017)
Chen
policy, regulations and the green et al. (2018) internal and external drivers”
Kiefer C.P. (2018)
Du et
innovation” al. (2018)
Horbach J. (2018)
Wang
et al. (2020)
Walton S. (2019)

El-Kassar
Leyva-de & Singh (2019)
la Hiz, (2019)
Garcia-Machado & Martinez-
Avila (2019)
Rabadan et al. (2019) Xie et
Garces-Ayerbe et al., al. (2019)
(2019)

Note(s): Each colour represents a different community

as a response to environmental pressures. Despite previous studies showing that the main The evolution
driving forces for change were either regulatory or commercial but not both, Green et al. of sustainable
(1994) found a strong correlation between commercial factors and the influence of regulation
and a particularly strong correlation between the anticipation of regulation, the fear of rival
innovation
products, and the threat to market share. Then, in the ecological economics literature the
definition of eco-innovations is introduced, addressing three kinds of innovation changes that
can lead to sustainable development: technological, organisational, social or institutional
(Rennings, 2000). The regulatory push/pull effect is identified as one of the three peculiarities
of eco-innovation because factors of technology push and market pull alone are not enough,
and specific regulatory support to eco-innovations is needed. The other two are the double
externality problem and social and institutional innovation.
In the US context, the role of environmental regulations and pollution abatement
expenditures on environmental innovation is studied by Brunnermeier and Cohen (2003).
They investigated the determinants of environmental innovation measured by the number of
environmental patent applications that succeeded. The findings suggested that increased
enforcement activities did not provide higher incentives to innovate, while increased
pollution abatement expenditures had an impact on environmental innovation. However,
these studies did not consider either the effect of voluntary environmental measures or the
different characteristics of the EU Environmental Management and Auditing Scheme
(EMAS), which are considered in the study conducted by Rennings et al. (2006) in the German
context, showing a positive influence of the maturity of Environmental Management Systems
(EMS) on environmental process innovations. They also considered the output of the
innovation process rather than patents as a proxy for technical innovations and based the
analysis on disaggregated data at the firm level rather than the industry level such as
Brunnermeier and Cohen (2003) and Pickman (1998). Scholars are investigating at the firm
level of analysis how firms’ technological activities aimed at developing new environmentally
friendly products and processes are affected by research and development policies,
environmental policies, firm-level characteristics, etc. They also found that learning
processes when implementing environmental management systems have a positive impact
on environmental product innovations and ultimately on economic performance. By
exploring the determinants of environmental innovations, Horbach (2008) found that
environmental management tools, environmental regulation and other organisational
changes can have a positive impact on environmental innovation, which is also coherent
with the “Porter Hypothesis” (Porter and van der Linde, 1995). This states that coercive
environmental regulations could promote competitive advantages for firms and lead to a win-
win situation in which pollution is reduced and profit is increased. The importance of
environmental management tools for the introduction of environmental product innovations
was already confirmed by the previous study of Rennings et al. (2006). Oltra and Saint Jean
(2009) contributed to the theme on the determinants and patterns of environmental
innovations, studying how a sectoral system approach can affect environmental innovations
in the context of the French automotive industry. They developed a sectoral framework
based on three building blocks: demand conditions, technological regimes, and innovation
policy. The sectoral patterns of environmental innovation resulted from how these three
building blocks relate to each other. Thus, the focus on environmental innovations is enriched
not only by the incentive effects of regulation but also by the role of technology, demand
conditions and public policy.
6.2.2 Theme 2: “EI determinants and firms’ specific factors and the debate between
corporate environmental performance (CEP) and corporate financial performance (CFP)”.
From the study by Horbach (2008), another branch of knowledge (theme) was born. This
theme regards the “EI determinants and firms’ specific factors and the debate between CEP and
CFP”. New EI determinants have been identified, such as customer benefits, cost savings and
EJIM government regulations, and unique organisational resources and capabilities are found to
affect the competitiveness of firms in terms of efficiency, environmental and financial
performance.
During the evolution of the field, authors have considered output when measuring the
environmental innovation (Ziegler and Seijas Nogareda, 2009) rather than environmental
patents (Brunnermeier and Cohen, 2003, Theme 1: “the role of Regulation, Market and
Technology”). Furthermore, contrary to the previous theme in which studies focused on the
influence of EMS certification on environmental processes or product innovations (Horbach,
2008, Theme 1), environmental process innovations seem to have a significantly positive
effect on certified EMS. Thus, this causal relationship is ambiguous, and a complex dynamic
interrelationship between these measures is more likely to exist (Ziegler and Seijas
Nogareda, 2009). This theme still deals with the eco-innovation determinants; however,
scholars in the field are trying to take a step further in the analysis by distinguishing
different areas of environmental impact. The key determinants identified are customer
benefits, cost savings and government regulation. Government regulation is still very
important for eco-innovation and to encourage firms to reduce air, water pollution, noise
emissions and to increase the recyclability of products. Horbach (2008) also found regulation
and cost saving motivation to be key determinants. However, some new insights emerged:
cost saving seems to be the main motivation for energy consumption; EMS seems to be a
useful tool to reduce incomplete information within companies. Horbach et al. (2012) found
that regulations are less significant for energy consumption and recycling, and thus,
different policy approaches are needed for different areas of environmental impact.
Following the MP, the next study was written by Cainelli and Mazzanti (2013) and differs
from previous studies that focused mainly on manufacturing companies, their polluting
effects and the role of the regulation (Horbach, 2008; Horbach et al., 2012). It investigated
whether the integration of manufacturing and services sectors plays a role in environmental
innovations. In this way, the authors also respond to the need for additional studies on eco-
innovation in the service sector, which was already highlighted by Rennings (2000). The
findings showed that the drivers of environmental innovations to promote energy efficiency
and carbon abatement are different from industry to industry, and training programs,
collaboration and environmental management systems (EMS) are found to be critical in
these processes. They found that the major driver of CO2 is related to the energy mix and
energy inputs used. Furthermore, two types of environmental innovations are introduced:
one aimed at reducing the negative externalities; the second one allowing for efficiency
increase and cost savings. The findings show that these types of environmental innovation
can affect the relationship between environmental innovation and competitiveness. This
theme is more concerned with better understanding whether “it pays to be green”. Ghisetti
and Rennings (2014) stated that positive economic benefits are achieved if adopting eco-
innovations leads to cost-saving and/or reduction of energy use or materials per unit of
output. Thus, the drivers of EI can influence the firms’ competitiveness. However, the
environmental and financial performance relationship is not fully confirmed due to the lack
of theoretical underpinning and availability of data. To contribute to this debate, using a
sample of Japanese manufacturing companies and adopting a Resource Based View (RBV)
and a Natural Resource Based View (NRBV), Lee and Min (2015) investigated the impact of
green research and development investment for eco-innovation on environmental and
financial performance. Their main objective was examining the relationship between green
R&D investment, carbon emissions and financial performance of firms. The results showed
a negative relationship between green research and development and carbon emissions, and
that for firms to attain superior corporate environmental and financial performance they
should adopt unique organisational resources and capabilities and adopt a proactive
environmental strategy.
 6.2.3 Theme 3: “green innovation and internal and external drivers”. This theme detected The evolution
by the MP follows the Theme: “EI determinants and firm specific factors and the debate of sustainable
between corporate environmental performance (CEP) and corporate financial performance
(CFP)” and it includes studies of the last five years which mainly contribute to the green
innovation
innovation theory by investigating the internal and external drivers. This begins with the
study by Li et al. (2017) which explored both external and internal drivers of corporate green
innovation, the influence of external legitimacy pressure and internal corporate profitability,
and their influence on green product and process innovation. They used a sample of the top
100 Chinese listed companies and demonstrated that legitimacy pressure from stakeholders
has a significant positive influence on both corporate green product and process innovation.
Investments in green technologies are risky due to their resource-consuming nature
(Dangelico and Pujari, 2010); companies with higher profitability can afford these
investments (Cainelli et al., 2015). They found corporate profitability to have a positive
impact only on green product innovation. The next study by Chen et al. (2018) also considered
a sample of the top 100 Chinese listed companies from 2008 to 2014 and found support for the
“Porter Hypothesis” and that both normative and coercive pressure positively influence
corporate green innovation. Then they investigated the moderating effect of internal
organisational slack by considering the combination of the institutional theory and resource-
based view. The results showed that firms should implement more coercive tools and
ultimately should improve green innovation by the rational allocation of slacks. Du et al.
(2018) focused on the green customer and supplier integration and how this can affect the
green innovation performance, given the moderating role of internal integration. The results
revealed that the interaction between green customer integration and green supplier
integration has a positive impact on green innovation performance. In addition, internal
integration moderates the relationship between green customer integration and green
innovation performance but does not moderate the relationship between green supplier
integration and green innovation performance. The recent study by Wang et al. (2020), based
on the resource-based view, investigated the relationship between green learning orientation
and ambidextrous green innovation. They also considered the mediating role of green
knowledge acquisition and the moderating role of environmental, organisational culture. The
findings suggest that green learning innovation has a stronger impact on exploratory green
innovation rather than exploitative green innovation. This study emphasised the importance
of green learning orientation to achieve SI performance and contributed significantly to the
area of green innovation. El-Kassar and Singh (2019) focus attention on the practices that
enhance environmental performance, and on how to adapt for the implementation of
environmental-friendly business activities, given the internal and external pressure.
Examples of these practices are green innovation, green technologies and the
implementation of green supply chain management. The study by Xie et al. (2019) linked
green technology innovation to the firm’s financial performance and confirmed that green
process innovation has a positive impact on green product innovation, and both green
process innovation and green product innovation can have a positive impact on the firm
financial performance. Garcıa-Machado and Martınez-Avila  (2019) investigated the
mediating role of green innovation in the relationship between green culture and
environmental performance in the automotive sector in Mexico. The hypotheses tested
were based on the capability-based theory and the NRBV. They found that green innovation
significantly plays a mediating role in the relationship between green culture and
environmental performance. The last study by Rabadan et al. (2019) focused on
technological eco-innovation and different types of cooperation and investigated the
conditions that can improve the performance of companies in the agri-food industry.
Cooperation is particularly important in SMEs, as they usually lack the resources needed to
achieve technological innovation; this is now considered an essential factor of open
EJIM innovation. The findings also revealed that companies could improve their performance by
engaging in eco-innovation strategies, which are a source of competitive advantage for the
reduction of costs and the increase in revenues.
6.2.4 Theme 4: “the strategic determinants of green (non-green) innovation”. The next
theme detected by the MP analysis follows Theme 1 “The role of Regulation, Market and
Technology” and is linked to the study by Oltra and Saint Jean (2009).
This theme aims to shed light on the strategic aspects to enhance environmental
innovations. The attention is on strategic collaboration and involvement with suppliers for
manufacturing firms to successfully develop new green products. Referring to Oltra and
Saint Jean’s (2009, p. 567; Theme 1) definition of green innovations “as innovations that
consist of new or modified processes, practices, systems and products which benefit the
environment”, this type of innovation has a significant role for environmental and economic
market success. The authors investigated how to successfully achieve green innovation in
product development with greater supplier collaboration. This seems to play a key role in
promoting the ability of manufacturers to successfully implement green innovation in the
development of products. The results showed a strong linkage between the development of
new green products and environmental compliance. They also found that technological
integration could promote strategic environmental collaboration between suppliers and the
buying company. Ultimately, the results showed that to bring both environmental and
commercial success and to meet demanding green customers, it is important to involve key
suppliers in the development of new green products (Lee and Kim, 2011). Firms’ strategies
and their relationship with environmental innovations are now of great interest, and B€onte
and Dienes (2013) contributed to the literature empirically testing the relationship between
energy and material efficiency innovations and firms’ strategies in process innovation. They
identified three different process innovation strategies: “in-house strategy”, “external
strategy” and “cooperation strategy”, depending on the level of involvement of external
partners. They found that firms implementing an external strategy were less likely to
introduce process innovations with an increase in energy and material efficiency due to the
lack of necessary capabilities. Despite the extant literature, they did not find that companies
following a “cooperation strategy” can have a greater environmental innovation
performance. This result is also confirmed by Cuerva et al. (2014), who investigated the
main drivers of eco-innovation in SMEs and the differences between the drivers that affect
green or non-green innovations in SMEs with a focus on the Low-Tech sector. However, firms
that are more concerned about quality and that have implemented Quality Management
Systems (QMSs) are also more likely to adopt environmental innovations. Thus, QMSs seem
to be the most important determinant of environmental innovation strategy. An important
policy recommendation that emerges suggests the implementation of management standards
certification at the firm level to foster eco-innovation in European firms. However, further
empirical studies are required to better understand the factors influencing eco-innovations
within SMEs with further distinction among different technologies and firm characteristics.
In the discussion on firm-level determinants of EI, Cainelli et al. (2015), by adopting a RBV,
provided theory-driven evidence that firms either developing or adopting green innovation
adopt different resources from those developing/adopting non-green innovations. Overall,
resources are becoming the new technological frontier as, in order to respond to the increasing
policy pressure, firms can respond only by exploiting new and complementary resources.
The study by Cainelli et al. (2015) adopted the resource-based view and provided a
framework to demonstrate that the resources (internal, external, hybrid) required by a firm
to develop green innovations are different from those necessary to develop non-green
innovations. They found that internal resources are more important for environmental
innovations and external relationships are more intensive for green innovators. The evidence
also suggests distinguishing firms according to industries and contexts (e.g. Central-
European countries, Mediterranean countries) and to the resources the firms have access to in The evolution
order to better understand whether they are likely to succeed when implementing/developing of sustainable
EIs. However, there is a need to better understand how the impact of the internal, external and
hybrid resources vary across EI types.
innovation
6.2.5 Theme 5: “The interplay between policy, regulations and the green innovation”. The
next theme of the MP is more concerned with the domain of “The interplay between policy,
regulations and the green innovation”. These studies mainly contributed to the literature by
pointing out the firm-specific characteristics and the policies for each type of eco-innovation
and highlighted the need to trigger firms to invest actively in green innovation.
The paper by Borghesi et al. (2015) gave birth to a new branch of knowledge which
contributes to the literature on the link between eco-innovation and environmental regulation.
However, while previous studies emphasised environmental regulations as a key driving
force underlying environmental innovation (Horbach, 2008), the authors focus on the specific
environmental policy of the European Trading Scheme (EU ETS). Despite previous results,
they found that market pull and technology push is not enough to foster environmental
innovation (Rennings, 2000) and that policies for R&D and innovation are relevant for carbon
dioxide-reducing innovations, as also stated by Horbach et al. (2012). Current and future
regulations are highly correlated to EI; thus, well-designed, long term policies are key
determinants of cleaner technologies for energy efficiency and CO2 reduction, while market
demand is not an important driver of green innovation. However, these diverse innovations
directed towards renewable energy, new materials, carbon dioxide reduction and recycling
technologies require different and specific managerial capabilities and policies. Thus,
Castellacci and Lie (2017) tried to answer the following question: “How do green innovators
differ from each other, and what are the main factors enhancing innovation in firms focusing
on different types of green innovation?” By employing data from manufacturing firms using
data from the Kore Innovation Survey 2010, they identified the main determinants and
drivers and ultimately proposed a taxonomy of green innovations, made up of four groups,
each of them represented by eco-innovative firms that focus on (1) carbon dioxide-reducing;
(2) waste-reducing; (3) recycling innovators and (4) pollution-reducing. The results revealed
that firms focusing on carbon dioxide reduction are characterised by more R&D capabilities
and a stronger relationship with universities or other public research institutes, while market
demand is more relevant for the group of recycling innovators. Firms in the pollution-
reducing cluster are more affected by environmental policies (taxes and regulations), and
waste-reducing firms also present high R&D capabilities in the same way as carbon dioxide-
reducing firms. However, at this point, research on the drivers of eco-innovation is still
underdeveloped, and it is not clear what the factors beyond investments in R&D in non-
innovating firms are. A later study by Kiefer et al. (2017) tried to go further in the discussion
by answering the following question: “Is there a simple, underlying set of characteristics, that
the diversity of eco-innovation has in common?” Thus, they explored the structure of eco-
innovation and improved the four-dimensional framework proposed by Carrillo-Hermosilla
et al. (2010). By applying the same methodological approach of Castellacci and Lie (2017) they
found that the engagement acceptance of users and clients, as well as cooperation with other
stakeholders, has a key role in the process of eco-innovation. As emerged from Theme 3:
“Green innovation and internal and external drivers”, firms are influenced by internal
(resources and capabilities) and external (public policy and stakeholder impacts) drivers
when adopting EIs and these contribute differently to the sustainable transition. However,
the attention is now more on internal factors such as the role of resources, competences, and
dynamic capabilities (RCCs) as drivers of and barriers to different EIs towards the circular
economy. Furthermore, specific RCCs play a different role for different degrees of radicality
(systemic vs. incremental ones) of EI types. For instance, financial investment, internal
innovation capabilities, the level of cooperation with external actors required would be higher
EJIM in the case of radical and systemic EIs than incremental EIs (Kiefer et al., 2019). Given these
considerations Kiefer et al. (2019) suggest that policy measures should promote different EI
types and, therefore, should be different across them.
As mentioned above, eco-innovations are becoming more and more prevalent, and
stakeholders are increasingly demanding that firms develop those strategic capabilities to
drive desired eco-innovation outcomes. However, the discussion about the determinants of
eco-innovation and, in particular, internal factors is still open and is now considering personal
characteristics as being able to influence the decision-making processes concerning eco-
innovations. Horbach and Jacob (2018) dealt with them by opening an important “black box”
of unexplained heterogeneity. Their findings revealed that export-oriented firms are also
more innovative; a highly qualified proportion of women and a mixed management board is
positively correlated with eco-innovation activities. Following the notion of “black box”,
Walton et al. (2019) explored eco-innovation considering some case studies of successful firm-
level energy innovations in New Zealand. This study represents a qualitative perspective in
this area that has seen the dominance of quantitative studies, such as the studies by Horbach
and Jacob (2018) and Kiefer et al. (2019). It includes models of successful (energy) eco-
innovation change and compared them to better understand the differences between
capabilities. They found that to develop an eco-innovation capability, physical and intangible
resources (learning and knowledge) need to be aligned with the firm strategies. Thus, a whole-
of-firm approach is necessary. The flow of knowledge is now investigating the importance of
strategic capabilities and organisational learning in the development of eco-innovations, and
among them, organisational learning seems to play a crucial role in the development of
competencies and those capabilities that can constitute a foundation for the development of
EIs. The increased number of environmental innovations is also related to the increased
awareness of sustainability issues. However, this awareness tends to vary among
industrialized countries. Leyva-de la Hiz (2019) did not find support for the hypothesis
that companies from pluralistic countries are generating more environmental innovations.
Because pluralistic countries are characterised by unstable, individual policy network
styles, this may protect individual rights and interests and thus impede the further
development of environmental innovations. Leyva de la Hiz’s study contributes to
institutional theory on environmental issues as it investigates different policy network
styles in the context of environmental innovations, which is still considered understudied in
the academic literature. Ultimately Garces-Ayerbe et al. (2019) investigated the importance of
communication and cooperation and found that communication is the step before
cooperation, while communication is the first mechanism required to engage stakeholders
and has a positive impact on eco-innovation strategies. They concluded that the achievement
of eco-innovation strategies formulated through communication and then cooperation is
greater than when they are accompanied only by communication. Thus, they contributed to
the literature by providing empirical evidence that firms’ eco-innovation strategy is the result
of the process of adapting to stakeholders “knowledge, requirements, and expectations on
environmental concerns”.

7. Global citation score analysis (GCS)

The MP analysis only considers the papers of the connected component; thus, to overcome
this limitation and identify the recent topics of interest within the scientific community, we
then applied the GCS analysis. This is an effective way to identify the seminal or recent
breakthrough studies, and it shows the total number of citations of a paper in the Scopus
database regardless of their inclusion in the MP of a connected component in the citation
network. The assumption behind this analysis is that papers with many citations on Scopus
are considered influential or seminal papers within the body of knowledge (Knoke and Yang,
2008). Furthermore, to identify the articles that have more recent relevance within the The evolution
scientific community, we ranked the most cited papers by considering the number of citations of sustainable
that each of them obtained in 2019 (the most recent year) divided by the number of years since
the publication year. In this way, we also consider how “old” a paper is as the number of
innovation
citations tends to increase over time by seeking to control for this effect (Table 2).

7.1 Critical assessment of the GCS analysis

This top-ten list report can help to increase the reliability of the review by detecting the
seminal or recent break-through studies (Strozzi et al., 2017), especially given the fact that
the MP is not simply a sub-network of the field’s most cited papers. In this way the results of
the GCS complement the MP analysis and help to better delineate the existing streams of
research, suggesting that authors are interested in better understanding sustainability
performance and its integration in business models.
The first ranked paper is the study by Boons and L€ udeke-Freund (2013), which
investigated how the adoption of business model perspectives might promote research on SI.
After reviewing the literature on business models under three relevant levels of analysis:
technological, organisational, and social innovation, they defined a set of normative
requirements that should guide business models for SI. They also suggested that SI literature
lacks attention on how to implement successful marketing innovations; however, business
models can help in this regard. Furthermore, innovations can be more successfully generated
and studied when considering the concept of business models. These are also considered
analytical tools that provide a connection between each firm and the consumption and
production system in which they belong. Boons et al. (2013) (2nd ranked paper) found that
research on SI is more focused on the co-evolution of technologies, social practices and
institutions adapting to sustainability. The third-ranked paper is the study by Horbach et al.
(2012), which was detected by the MP analysis and belongs to Theme 2. The fourth study by
Schot and Geels (2008) was not included in the MP; it discusses research on strategic niche
management, which suggests that SI can be promoted with the creation of technological
niches that would lead to societal changes towards sustainable development. Strategic niche
management research has focused on the role of several niche-internal processes such as
expectation dynamics, learning and network development. This study can be traced back to
Theme 5 of the MP, “The interplay between policy, regulations and the green innovation”.
Scholars also seem to be exploring more the crucial role played by cooperation strategies, as
also emerged from the previous analysis. De Marchi (2012) explored the relationship between
R&D cooperation strategies and the propensity to introduce new environmental innovations
within Spanish manufacturing firms. She provided empirical evidence to support the
importance of cooperation with external partners, especially suppliers, who were found to
play a crucial role. This study contributed to the strand of literature that explores a broad
range of green innovation subtypes by stating that eco-innovations are more complex than
other types of innovation as they require a wider set of resources; they largely depend on
external sources of knowledge and information. Dangelico and Pujari (2010) focused on green
product innovation, which is the result of the interaction between innovation and
sustainability and is considered one of the key factors to promote environmental
sustainability and growth. In this study, they propose a conceptual framework made of
the three main dimensions of green product innovation: energy minimisation, materials
reduction as well as pollution prevention. The results showed that environmental regulations
could also constitute opportunities for risk minimisation, new business creation and
preservation of reputation and revenues. The integration of environmental sustainability
issues into product development and business operations can lead to many benefits. Some of
them are increased sales, greater efficiency in the use of resources, return on investment,
 EJIM

Table 2.

cited papers
GCS of the most 10
Citations 2019/
Publication Total No. of Main years since the
year Document title Authors Journal title citations path publication Rank

2013 Business models for sustainable innovation: Boons F., Ludeke- Journal of cleaner 641 No 21 1
State-of-the-art and steps towards a research Freund F production
agenda
2000 Redefining innovation - eco-innovation Rennings K Ecological economics 898 Theme 6 9
research and the contribution from ecological 1
economics
2008 Strategic niche management and sustainable Schot J., Geels F.W Technology analysis 745 No 11 4
innovation journeys: Theory, findings, and strategic
research agenda, and policy management
2008 Determinants of environmental innovation- Horbach J Research policy 558 Theme 8 7
New evidence from German panel data sources 1
2006 The influence of green innovation performance Chen Y.-S., Lai S.- Journal of business 541 No 8 8
on corporate advantage in Taiwan B., Wen C.-T ethics
2012 Determinants of eco-innovations by type of Horbach J., Ecological economics 426 Theme 12 3
environmental impact–the role of regulatory Rammer C., 2
push/pull, technology push and market pull Rennings K
2013 Sustainable innovation, business models and Boons F., Journal of cleaner 360 No 13 2
economic performance: An overview Montalvo C., Quist production
J., Wagner M
2012 Environmental innovation and R&D De Marchi V Research policy 376 No 11 5
cooperation: Empirical evidence from Spanish
manufacturing firms
2010 Mainstreaming green product innovation: Dangelico R.M., Journal of business 405 No 8 6
Why and how companies integrate Pujari D ethics
environmental sustainability
2008 The driver of green innovation and green Chen Y.-S Journal of business 401 No 6 10
image–green core competence ethics
Source(s): Scopus
development of new markets, product differentiation, higher competitive advantage, The evolution
improved corporate image. However, investment in green technologies is risky as they of sustainable
consume resources and exhibit return uncertainty (Li et al., 2017, Theme 3). It also emerged
that companies were particularly aware of the importance of quality and product pricing
innovation
attributes as signs to encourage environmental integration. Another challenge that emerges
is related to the lack of customer informativeness regarding the premium price usually
attributed to green products. To overcome this issue, companies could implement eco-labels
or third-party certification to clearly inform customers. They also outlined the need to further
investigate green product portfolio management to improve our understanding of how
companies invest in green product technology platforms to bring new green products into
markets. The seventh-ranked paper by Horbach (2008) has already been mentioned as one of
the papers detected by the MP. The next study by Chen et al. (2006) covered the fields
of economic development and environmental protection, which refer to the concept of
sustainable development. They investigated whether the performance of green innovation
can positively affect the competitive advantage. They considered green innovation as green
product innovation and green process innovation and explored the influences that they can
have on corporate competitive advantage. The results revealed a positive relationship; thus,
investments in green product and green process innovations can increase corporate
competitive advantage. The study by Rennings (2000) is the 9th ranked paper, and it is also
included in the MP (Theme 1). The last article by Chen (2008) was not detected by the previous
analysis, and it proposed a novel construct, “the green core competence”, which was found to
be positive to green innovation performance and green image. This study suggests that the
enhancement of green core competencies can promote green innovation and green image.
The GCS results complemented the MP results suggesting that scholars are now
investigating the role of business models to promote SI and to achieve a competitive
advantage, as business models seem to provide a connection between firms and the
consumption and production system in which they operate. Overall, business models
emerged as important tools for researchers and practitioners to enhance sustainable
innovation practices. Furthermore, government regulations seem to play a key role in guiding
business models to create sustainable value and there is also a need to integrate niche internal
processes such as learning, networking and visioning with niche external processes. The CGS
results have also confirmed the importance of green product innovation as a key factor to
promote environmental sustainability and growth, the importance to aim at the long-term
environmental performance and the key role of cooperation strategies for the development
and implementation of environmental innovations. Studies that found external cooperation
and external sources of knowledge to be important factors for green innovations are related to
Theme 1 (Horbach, 2008 for Germany), Theme 2 (Ghisetti and Rennings, 2014), Theme 4
(Cainelli et al., 2015 for Italy) and Theme 5 (Castellacci and Lie, 2017 for South Korea) of the
MP analysis. Sustainable innovation scholars are now focusing on collaboration activities
and stakeholder engagement as it is difficult to achieve within one organisation and thus
requires a strategic network (e.g. suppliers and institutions). The need has also emerged for
more studies that investigate how to implement the stakeholders’ needs within the
organisation and to better understand “how” to design business models and “what” their role
is in achieving SI.

8. Burst detection analysis

We then performed the Burst detection analysis to detect the sequences of topics which
appear, then grow in term of intensity, and ultimately end because of the emergence of other
topics. This appearance of a topic is signalled as a “burst”, with certain features rising in
frequency as the topic spreads over time (Kleinberg, 2003; Strozzi et al., 2017). The burst
EJIM detection was applied to the author keywords, normalised after loading the data into Sci 2
software, using pre-processing and normalising features that include a text analysis
algorithm.
The results of the burst detection were then imported into another open-source software
(GIMP) for a more advanced visualisation after the normalisation process (Figure 6). The
main characteristics of the Kleinberg algorithm are that when a term becomes widely used, it
is no longer considered as a word burst and consequently disappears from the list (Ciano et al.,
2019; Pollack and Adler, 2015).
The final output is a list of topic bursts and the weight of each item, which represents
the magnitude of the change in the keywords’ frequency (Ciano et al., 2019). We selected
the most meaningful and recent bursts to highlight the emerging trends in the field;
however, the full list of burst words (Table A1) is available in the Appendix with the
relevant references. The “theory” burst refers to the “Institutional theory”, which, together
with the Resource-Based View (RBV), has highlighted the importance of resources
(Berrone et al., 2013). Aragon-Correa and Hiz (2016) extended the conclusions of Berrone
et al. (2013) concerning the importance of institutional factors to foster firms
“environmental innovations and their similarities in a specific industry field”. The great
attention to emerging economies (“emerg”) is consistent with the above-mentioned results,
and it is due to their fast industrialisation process that requires significant sustainable
interventions (Xiang and Wu, 2012; Xu and Bai, 2019). The “export intensity” burst is
another trending topic in 2019 that seems to be in line with the “institutional theory” burst.
Galbreath (2019) identified three reasons why “export intensity” is linked to green
innovations: (1) supply chains and influential international buyers can exercise coercive
control over organisational behaviour; (2) Export countries with strong environmental
legislation can also act as a coercive force for the adoption of green innovations; (3) Global
responsibility requires firms and governments to respond to climate change. The “open”
burst refers to the concept of “Open Innovation”, which is one of the most recent topics in
the field, and it is defined as “the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to
accelerate internal innovation and expand the markets for external use of innovation,
respectively” (Chesbrough et al., 2006, p. 1). Those firms that intensively manage Open
Innovation with multiple partners benefit from the collaborations in terms of achieving
higher SI performance (Rauter et al., 2019). From the analysis of the 3rd theme MP Open
innovation also emerged as an essential factor of collaboration and enabled firms to reduce
uncertainty usually associated with innovation and eco-innovation processes (Rabadan
et al., 2019). Nielsen (2020) argues that while there is a great focus on collaboration between
institutions, this is still very limited on end-users. The role of end-users as a driver of SI is
increasingly accepted in the SI literature but not yet among sustainability policymakers.
Another burst detected is “policy” (environmental policy) that underlines the importance
of environmental regulations in the development of environmental innovations. An
interesting burst is “TRIZ” which comes from the Russian synonym for the theory of
inventive problem-solving, that is, “innovative invention problem-solving theory” (Lan
et al., 2018). It was developed to provide a theoretical basis for creative production tools
and solutions for projects. Several studies have identified a relationship between TRIZ and
eco-innovation, stating that problems related to eco-innovation can be detected and sorted
by applying the TRIZ theory (Chang and Chen, 2004; Cherifi et al., 2015; Weng and
Jenq, 2013).

9. Discussion and future research agenda

The SLNA methodology enabled us to extract the full picture of the body of knowledge by
systematising the research findings on SIs at the firm level with a novel approach. The critical
 The evolution
of sustainable
innovation

Figure 6.
Burst detection results
EJIM assessment of the MP papers with the support of the Louvain algorithm of Pajek detected five
themes: (1) “the role of Regulation, Market and Technology”; (2) “Eco-Innovation
determinants and firm specific factors and the debate between corporate environmental
performance (CEP) and corporate financial performance (CFP)”; (3) “Green innovation and
internal and external drivers”; (4) “The strategic determinants of green (non-green)
innovation”; (5) “The interplay between policy, regulations and the green innovation”. The
aims of this section are to discuss the results of each theme, point out their potential future
development and suggest future research directions in the field by combining the results of all
the analyses, which have been summarised in the final Table 3.
Theme 1 dealt with “The role of Regulation, Market and Technology”, which highlighted
the correlation between commercial factors and the influence of regulation and the correlation
between the anticipation of regulation, the fear of rival products. The definition of eco-
innovations was introduced, addressing three kinds of innovation changes that can lead to
sustainable development: technological, social and institutional. The peculiarities of eco-
innovation were identified as: the regulatory push/pull effect, the double externality problem
and social and institutional innovation. The determinants of environmental innovation were
measured by the number of environmental patent applications that succeeded. Overall, three
building blocks gained importance: demand conditions, technological regimes and
innovation policy as demonstrated by the sectoral framework developed by Oltra and
Saint Jean (2009). The literature on “The role of Regulation, Market and Technology” revealed
the need for studies investigating the impact of market orientation (proactive and responsive)
on SI performance and studies on how a sectoral system approach can affect SI, based on the
above mentioned building blocks developed by Oltra and Saint Jean (2009). Scholars might
explore further the co-evolution of the three building blocks in order to develop proposals on
how to affect the transformation systems with comprehensive analyses, which include
cooperation with stakeholders.
Theme 2, “EI determinants and firm specific factors and the debate between Corporate
Environmental Performance (CEP) and Corporate Financial Performance (CFP)”, revealed:
the positive relationship between EMSs and environmental, technological innovations; the
key role played by customer benefits; cost savings and government regulations as
determinants of eco-innovations. There is the emergence of training programs and
collaborations to promote eco-innovations and the competitiveness of firms. The
uniqueness of organisational resources and capabilities is seen as a strategic way to
achieve superior corporate environmental and financial performance and can play a key role
in achieving higher competitiveness. The results showed that when it comes to analysing the
determinants of eco-innovations, there is a need to distinguish between different
environmental areas such as energy use, water consumption, etc. This represents a
research gap that could be considered by scholars for further investigation. We also found
that organisational innovations such as EMS seem to overcome incomplete information
within companies and are important tools to trigger cleaner cost-saving technologies.
However, more empirical research is needed on the relevance of EMS for environmental
management and performance. This might also lead to policy improvements for initiatives
that deal with environmental problems. Academics are also invited to further investigate
issues related to the implementation of EMS in large and small-medium sized companies.
The analysis of Theme 3 “Green innovation and internal and external drivers” revealed
that the literature is now concerned about the legitimacy pressure from stakeholders on both
corporate green product and process innovation and the impact of corporate profitability on
green product innovation. The interaction between green customer integration and green
supplier integration is found to positively affect green innovation performance. Green
learning innovation has emerged as having an important role in exploratory and exploitative
green innovations. New practices to enhance environmental performance, such as green
Themes
Theme 1: “The role of
regulation, market and
technology”
Theme 2: “EI determinants and
firm specific factors and the
debate between corporate
environmental performance
(CEP) and corporate financial
performance (CFP)”
research
Table 3.
directions (FRDs)
Findings and future
Authors of MP
Green et al. (1994), Rennings (2000),
Pickman (1998), Rennings et al.
(2006), Brunnermeier and Cohen
(2003), Horbach (2008), Oltra and
Saint Jean (2009)
Ziegler and Seijas Nogareda (2009),
Horbach et al. (2012), Cainelli and
Mazzanti (2013), Ghisetti and
Rennings (2014), Lee and Min
(2015)
Main concepts
The regulatory push/pull effect; the
double externality problem; social and
institutional innovation; environmental
regulatory; pollution abatement
expenditures; environmental innovation;
Porter hypothesis; automotive industry
Eco-innovation determinants; customer
benefits, cost savings and government
regulation; training programs,
collaboration and environmental
management systems (EMSs); unique
organisational resources and
capabilities; proactive environmental
strategy
Relations with GCS Relations with burst detection FRDs
Determinants of environmental Technology Rennings (2000), Barbiroli The impact of market orientation
innovation (Horbach, 2008); The and Raggi (2003), environmental (proactive and responsive) on SI
definition of eco-innovations addressing innovation Marvin et al. (1999), performance, and studies on how a
three kinds of innovation changes that Gonzalez and Leon (2001), Horbach sectoral system approach can affect SI,
can lead to sustainable development: (2008) based on three building blocks: Demand
Technological, social and institutional conditions, technological regimes, and
(Rennings, 2000) innovation policy developed by Oltra and
Saint Jean (2009). Scholars might explore
further the co-evolution of the three
building blocks in order to develop
proposals on how to affect the
transformation systems with
comprehensive analyses, which include
cooperation with stakeholders
Determinants of eco-innovations by Eco innovation Ponomariov and There is the emerging interest in training
type of environmental impact the role of Toivanen (2014), Quitzow et al. (2014), programs and collaborations to promote
regulatory push/pull, technology push Chiarvesio et al. (2015), open innovation eco-innovations and the competitiveness
and market pull (Horbach et al., 2012); Rashid et al. (2014), Mazzanti (2018), of firms
The relationship between performance environmental management Cheng The analysis of the determinants of eco-
of green innovation and the competitive et al. (2014), learning Correia de Sousa innovations by distinguishing between
advantage (Chen et al., 2006) (2006) different environmental areas such as
energy use and water consumption
Empirical investigations on the relevance
of EMS for environmental management
and performance. This might also lead to
policy improvements for initiatives that
deal with environmental problems.
Academics are also invited to further
investigate issues related to the
implementation of EMS in large and
small-medium sized companies
(continued )
The evolution
innovation
of sustainable

Table 3.
Themes Authors of MP
Theme 3: “Green innovation Lee and Min (2015), Li et al. (2017),
and internal and external Chen et al. (2018), Du et al. (2018),
drivers” Wang et al. (2020), El-Kassar and
Singh (2019), Xie et al. (2019),
Garcıa-Machado and Martınez-

Avila (2019), Rabadan et al. (2019)
Main concepts
Institutional theory; resource-based
view; interaction between green
customer integration and green supplier
integration; green learning orientation
and ambidextrous green innovation;
green culture; cooperation
Relations with GCS
Green product innovation is one of the
key factors to promote environmental
sustainability and growth. Why and
how companies integrate
environmental sustainability
(Dangelico and Pujari, 2010)
Relations with burst detection
Sustainable development Mirata and
Emtairah (2005), sustainability
Rennings et al. (2006), learning Correia
de Sousa (2006), institutional theory
Leyva-de la Hiz (2019), Yu et al. (2019),
Leyva-de la Hiz et al. (2019), emerging
economies Ponomariov and Toivanen
(2014), Quitzow et al. (2014), Chiarvesio
et al. (2015)
EJIM
FRDs
There is a call for empirical studies on
non-European countries, which are still
limited, especially on emerging countries,
which would be of great interest due to
the fast industrialisation and the failure of
the strategy “grow first, clean-up later”
(Rock and Angel, 2007)
There is a need for a clear identification of
the benefit from environment-friendly
activities in terms of organisational and
financial performance (Rabadan et al.,
2019)
The link between the sustainability of the
agri-food sector and its profitability with
a win-win scenario
Scholars might consider investigating the
mediating role of green innovation in
green culture and environmental
performance through longitudinal
studies in order to make long term
comparisons and in different contexts
In future studies, other variables can be
investigated, such as green knowledge
integration capability, dynamic
capabilities and environmental
awareness. Furthermore, the associations
among green cultural, learning,
technological, market, and
entrepreneurial orientation in relation to
green knowledge acquisition and
ambidextrous green innovation, in
different contexts, could be considered in
the way they influence each other. For
example: How can green learning
orientation, green knowledge acquisition,
environmental organizational culture and
ambidextrous green innovation affect
each other?
(continued )
Themes
Theme 4: “The strategic
determinants of green (non-
green) innovation”
Table 3.
Authors of MP
Lee and Kim (2011), B€onte and
Dienes (2013), Cuerva et al. (2014),
Cainelli et al. (2015)
Main concepts
Suppliers’ collaboration; technological
integration; strategic environmental
collaboration between suppliers and the
buying company; in-house strategy;
external strategy; cooperation strategy;
quality management systems (QMSs);
internal, external and hybrid resources
Relations with GCS
Boons and L€ udeke-Freund (2013)
proposed a relationship between the
adoption of new business models, SI
and firm strategy fields
Relations with burst detection
Open innovation Li-Ying et al. (2018),
Triguero et al. (2018), sustainability
Rennings et al. (2006), Massa et al.
(2017)
FRDs
Future studies might consider
investigating the benefits of coordination
and collaboration with suppliers in the
development of new green products. For
example: How can the role of coordination
and collaboration with suppliers in the
development of new green products be
achieved?
Starting from the framework developed
by Cainelli et al. (2015) that considers
internal, external and hybrid resources,
however, cross country analyses are
needed to better understand the driving
forces that differentiate countries toward
eco-innovation among firms
Due to the increased interest in the
climate and energy policy effects on eco-
innovation in the EU organisational
innovations as leading forces in
technological development, future studies
could investigate this relationship among
different sectors and countries and make
comparative studies
“How can organisations create value in
environmental, social, AND economic
terms?” (Massa et al., 2017)
Scholars are invited to investigate how SI
activities can affect organisational
performance and create sustainable
competitive advantage
There is a need to create sustainable
value with new business model
implementation towards sustainability
and better understand how to implement
the stakeholders’ needs within the
organisation and how to design the
business model and what its role is in
achieving SI. Future research in business
models could investigate how formal
models are different from business
models with a sustainability lens (Massa
et al., 2017)
(continued )
The evolution
innovation
of sustainable
 EJIM

Table 3.
Themes Authors of MP Main concepts Relations with GCS Relations with burst detection FRDs

Theme 5: “The interplay Borghesi et al. (2015), Castellacci
between policy, regulations and and Lie (2017), Kiefer et al. (2017),
the green innovation” Kiefer et al. (2019), Horbach and
Jacob (2018), Walton et al. (2019),
Leyva-de la Hiz (2019), Garces-
Ayerbe et al. (2019)
Source(s): Developed by the authors
Firm-specific characteristics and the
policies for different types of eco-
innovation; policies for R&D and
innovation for carbon dioxide-reducing
innovations; R&D capabilities;
relationships with universities or other
public research institutes; internal
factors; the role of resources,
competences, and dynamic capabilities
(RCCs) as drivers and barriers of
different EIs towards circular economy;
organisational learning; communication
and cooperation
The role of niche internal processes
(learning, networking and visioning)
must be linked with niche external
processes (Schot and Geels, 2008)
The drivers of green innovation and
green image–green core competence
(Chen, 2008)
Institutional theory Leyva-de la Hiz
(2019), Yu et al. (2019), Leyva-de la Hiz
et al. (2019), policy Cainelli et al. (2020),
research and development De Marchi
and Grandinetti (2013), Lee and Min
(2015)
The new taxonomy of green innovations
by Castellacci and Lie (2017) requires
further empirical studies to corroborate
this taxonomy especially in recently
developed countries
The synergistic effect of organisational
learning, knowledge management and
R&D capabilities on eco-innovation
performance
Empirical studies on the role of internal,
external, and hybrid resources in the
development of SI capabilities
How do SI activities affect organisational
performance and create sustainable
competitive advantage?
Due to the increasing interest in the
strategic capabilities of eco-innovation in
achieving competitive advantage and
improving environmental performance and
green innovation in organisations and
supply chain (Kiefer et al., 2017), future
research might consider countries based on
institutional characteristics, development
level, or open versus closed economies to
analyse the role of dynamic capabilities,
resources and competencies as drivers of
sustainable innovation practices
Academics might consider different types
of stakeholders and investigate their effects
on the firms’ eco-innovation strategies
The relevance of organisational learning in
the development of strategic capabilities
(e.g. dynamic capabilities) for eco-
innovation, and these strategic capabilities
are best developed when intangible and
tangible resources of firms are aligned,
which is possible when there is a whole-of-
firm approach (Walton et al., 2019).
However, further empirical analyses are
needed to support this statement
Furthermore, the emerging topic of
institutional theory in sustainability
management calls for further investigation
of the impact of internal and external
factors on the development of the
innovation process while considering
stakeholder interests
innovation, green technologies and green supply chain management and green culture have The evolution
emerged. The extant literature has mainly drawn attention to European countries (Demirel of sustainable
and Danisman, 2019; Triguero et al., 2013, 2016) while the empirical studies on non-European
countries are still limited, especially on emerging countries; this would be of great interest due
innovation
to the fast industrialisation and the failure of the strategy “grow first, clean-up later” (Rock
and Angel, 2007). Although there is increased attention to the environmental responsibility of
companies, the extent to which companies benefit from environment-friendly activities in
terms of organisational and financial performance is still not so clear (Rabadan et al., 2019).
The recent study by Rabadan et al. (2019) has found a link between the sustainability of the
agri-food sector and its profitability with a win-win scenario. However, more studies are
needed to verify if the results are consistent in the agri-food sector of different countries and
in other sectors. Green innovation was found to act as a mediating construct between green
culture and environmental performance (Garcıa-Machado and Martınez-Avila,  2019).
Scholars might consider investigating the mediating role of green innovation in the same
relationship through longitudinal studies in order to make long term comparisons and in
different contexts. The impact of environmental, organisational culture, green learning
orientation, and green knowledge acquisition on exploitative and exploratory green
innovations have been examined (Wang et al., 2020). In future studies, other variables
could be investigated, such as green knowledge integration capability, dynamic capabilities
and environmental awareness. Furthermore, the associations among green cultural, learning,
technological, market and entrepreneurial orientation in relation to green knowledge
acquisition and ambidextrous green innovation, in different contexts, could be considered in
the way they influence each other.
The analysis of theme 4 “The strategic determinants of green (non-green) innovation”
dealt with the strategic determinant of environmental innovations. Suppliers are recognised
as playing a key role in new product development through technological integration (Lee and
Kim, 2011). Three strategies are investigated: “in house strategy”, “external strategy” and
“cooperation strategy” as well as their effects on process innovations (B€onte and Dienes,
2013). The role of internal, external, and hybrid resources are investigated in environmental
innovation development (resource-based view) (Cainelli et al., 2015). It emerged that one of the
key factors in achieving environmental and economic success is green innovation, and the
suppliers’ involvement in green innovation has become a strategic approach. Future studies
might consider investigating the benefits of coordination and collaboration with suppliers in
the development of new green products. Starting from the framework developed by Cainelli
et al. (2015) that considers internal, external and hybrid resources, cross country analyses are
needed to better understand the driving forces that differentiate countries toward eco-
innovation among firms. The results of the analyses have also shown an increased interest in
the climate and energy policy effects on eco-innovation in the EU organisational innovations
as leading forces in technological development. Future studies could investigate this
relationship in different sectors and countries and make comparative studies.
Theme 5, “The interplay between policy, regulations and the green innovation” revealed
that the literature is now focusing on firm-specific characteristics, the policies for each type of
eco-innovation and the need to trigger firms to invest actively in green innovation (Borghesi
et al., 2015; Castellacci and Lie, 2017). Eco-innovations are becoming more and more prevalent,
and stakeholders are increasingly demanding that firms develop those internal strategic
capabilities to drive desired eco-innovation outcomes (Beuter J unior et al., 2019). Scholars are
experimenting with mechanisms to engage with stakeholders on eco-innovation strategies such
as communication and cooperation (Garces-Ayerbe et al., 2019). The new taxonomy of green
innovations that identified four groups of green innovators: carbon dioxide reducing, waste-
reducing, recycling innovators and pollution-reducing drawn up by Castellacci and Lie (2017)
requires further empirical studies to corroborate the taxonomy, especially in recently developed
EJIM countries. We found an increasing interest in the strategic capabilities of eco-innovation to
achieve competitive advantage and improve environmental performance and green innovation
in organisations and supply chain (Kiefer et al., 2017). Future research might consider countries
based on institutional characteristics, development level, or open versus closed economies to
analyse the role of dynamic capabilities, resources and competencies as drivers of SI. The MP
also showed the importance of communication and cooperation to successfully engage with
stakeholders and how it may have a positive impact on the eco-innovation strategy (Garces-
Ayerbe et al., 2019). Academics could consider different types of stakeholders and investigate
their effects on the firms’ eco-innovation strategies. The results also addressed the relevance of
organisational learning in the development of strategic capabilities (e.g. dynamic capabilities)
for eco-innovation, and these strategic capabilities are best developed when intangible and
tangible resources of firms are aligned, which is possible when there is a whole-of-firm
approach (Walton et al., 2019). However, further empirical analyses are needed to support this
statement. Furthermore, the emerging topic of Institutional theory (as also detected by the
Burst detection analysis) in sustainability management seems to require more studies to
investigate the impact of internal and external factors on the development of the innovation
process while considering stakeholder interests.
The analysis of the CGS (see Table 3) added other significant insights to the field and each
theme. Business models have emerged to change products, processes and organisational
form to be competitive on the market. Boons and L€ udeke-Freund (2013) proposed a
relationship between the adoption of new business models, SI and firm strategy fields. This
line of research between business models and strategy is attracting significant attention
leading to a critical research area, and a central question in sustainability research is “How
can organisations create value in environmental, social, AND economic terms?” (Massa et al.,
2017). Scholars are invited to investigate how SI activities can affect organisational
performance and create sustainable competitive advantage. There is a need to create
sustainable value with new business model implementation towards sustainability and to
better understand how to implement the stakeholders’ needs within the organisation as well
as to know how to design business models and what their role is in achieving SI. Future
research into business models could investigate how formal models are different from
business models with a sustainability lens (Massa et al., 2017).
SI has emerged as an ecosystem made of continuous interactions between several
stakeholders: the economy, society and other actors, as well as complementary collaborations
with other organisations (Zeng et al., 2017). However, it is not always straightforward to identify
the right stakeholders to involve when managing the sustainable innovation processes; thus,
future research might consider investigating methods and practices to reconcile any
misalignment emerging when collaborating with stakeholders with conflicting objectives.
Ultimately there is a need for studies that empirically investigate the organisational
performance outcomes of SI (Cillo et al., 2019). The limitations of quantitative studies, such
as omitting crucial variables, are encouraging qualitative analyses such as case studies, as this
approach can provide a more comprehensive view of the phenomenon under investigation.
However, the degree of generalizability is quite low; thus, a combination of the two methods is
suggested (del Rıo Gonzalez, 2009). Little attention has been devoted to the design elements of
environmental policy or to the efficiency of different environmental policy instruments.
Finally, the Burst detection analysis enabled us to detect some emerging trends in the field
that were not identified by the MP, analysis and the GCS, while confirming some of the
previous results. The most recent ones are: “the Institutional theory”, “Open innovation” and
“Export intensity”. Scholars are increasingly combining “the Institutional theory” with
innovation literature to investigate how the regulatory and normative pressures seem to
positively influence environmental innovations to form focal firms. However, future studies
might contribute to better understanding the organisational slacks faced by firms when
subject to these pressures. Stakeholder’s engagement seems to promote sustainability- The evolution
oriented innovations, which also influence firms’ financial performance. However, there is of sustainable
still a need for empirical studies to demonstrate how stakeholder’s involvement can benefit
firms’ capability to enhance innovations in relation to open innovation, which emphasises the
innovation
importance of external sources of knowledge for innovations (Ghassim and Bogers, 2019).
Thus, further studies might consider investigating how sustainable innovation can benefit
from open innovation and ultimately the impact on firms’ competitive advantage and
financial performance. As the burst detection analysis revealed, the role of “open innovation”
in SI also requires further investigation. Thus, firms should adopt a more collaborative
attitude to work together with partners and competitors to make quicker and effective
advancement in new products and processes. To do that, they need organisational and
individual capabilities to explore and integrate those external sources. Furthermore, the
European Commission is trying to implement policies towards open innovation, but these
initiatives mainly consider collaboration between institutions rather than end-users (Nielsen,
2020) which are considered to play a driving role for both sustainable and unsustainable
innovations (Verbong et al., 2019). There is increased attention on end-users in driving
transitions towards sustainability; however, there is still a lack of policy actions to create a
more supportive environment for sustainable end-user innovation.

10. Limitations
This study is not free from limitations. Firstly, the use of only one database for the extraction
of papers might result in the exclusion of some contributions that did not appear in the
Scopus database, even though this database is expected to cover all important journals and it
is the largest available. Secondly, the analysis of the MP included only the biggest connected
component; however, our analysis was made of 829 papers out of 1,108 papers meaning that
most of the papers were connected and considered in the analysis. Thirdly, the results of
SLNA are a consequence of the keywords’ selection process; therefore, different keywords
could have determined different results even though we tried to include all the most relevant
keywords for the scope of the study. Then we focus on academic journal papers in English,
and thus we have excluded papers in other languages. Despite the above-mentioned
limitations, SLNA analysis (through the detection of key contributions and trends in the field)
might still support practitioners, academics, and policymakers by illustrating the big picture
of the field and providing what they need to know (Huff, 2008). It might help newcomers
by identifying the main antecedents, key success factors and consequences of SI and
highlighting future avenues of research.

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Appendix The evolution
of sustainable
innovation
Start End
date date Burst Meaning Relevant references

2019 – Theory Institutional theory Leyva-de la Hiz (2019), Yu et al. (2019), Leyva-
de la Hiz et al. (2019)
2019 – Intens Export intensity Galbreath (2019), Choi and Yi (2018)
2018 2019 Open Open innovation Li-Ying et al. (2018), Triguero et al. (2018)
2015 2016 Eco Eco innovation Rashid et al. (2014), Mazzanti (2018)
2014 2015 Solar Solar power Olson (2014)
2014 2016 Emerg Emerging economies Ponomariov and Toivanen (2014), Quitzow
et al. (2014), Chiarvesio et al. (2015)
2011 2013 Research Research and De Marchi and Grandinetti (2013), Lee and Min
development (2015)
2011 2012 Design Eco design Negny et al. (2012)
2009 2016 Diffus Innovation diffusion Cantono and Silverberg (2009), Ozaki (2011)
2007 2013 Polici Policy Cainelli et al. (2020)
2007 2013 Choic Discrete choice model Frondel et al. (2007), Horbach et al. (2013)
2006 2007 Sustain Sustainability Rennings et al. (2006), Massa et al. (2017)
2005 2009 Learn Learning Correia de Sousa (2006)
2005 2010 Ecolog Ecological Yarime (2007)
2005 2007 Develop Sustainable Mirata and Emtairah (2005)
development
2004 2014 Triz TRIZ Yang and Chen (2011)
2002 2011 Abat Pollution abatement Brunnermeier and Cohen (2003)
2000 2010 Manag Environmental Cheng et al. (2014)
management
1999 2010 Water Water Marvin et al. (1999)
1999 2002 Environment Environmental Marvin et al. (1999), Gonzalez and Leon (2001)
innovation Table A1.
1997 2012 Technolog Technology Rennings (2000), Barbiroli and Raggi (2003) The list of bursts, their
1997 2010 System Innovation system Purkus et al. (2018) meanings, and relevant
1992 2010 Pollut Pollution Brunnermeier and Cohen (2003) references

About the authors

Giovanna Afeltra is a PhD fellow in Management, Finance, and Accounting at Cattaneo University
(LIUC) – Castellanza (VA), Italy, and visiting research (in distance) at the School of Business, Economics
and Accounting – FEARP at the University of S~ao Paulo (Brasil). Her research interests include
sustainability, innovation with a focus on sustainable innovation performance, and dynamic
capabilities. She is a member of the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research
(CSEAR) and a researcher at Family Business Lab (LIUC University). Giovanna Afeltra is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: gafeltra@liuc.it
Sayed Alireza Alerasoul is a PhD fellow in Management, Finance, and Accounting at Cattaneo
University (LIUC) – Castellanza (VA), Italy, and a visiting researcher at the chair for Strategic
Management and Organization, University of Bayreuth (Germany). His main areas of interest are
strategic entrepreneurship and innovation with a focus on sustainability and organizational learning
ambidexterity. He has presented his research papers to national and international conferences on
management, economics, and industrial engineering.
Fernanda Strozzi is an Associate Professor at Cattaneo University (LIUC) – Castellanza (VA), Italy.
She is graduated in Mathematics and received her PhD in Chemical Engineering. Her main research
EJIM interests include Social Network Analysis, Theory of Nonlinear Systems and Time Series Analysis. On
these issues, she has co-authored several papers in peer-reviewed journals, and she has been the
coordinator of European funded projects on the sensitivity of chemical reactions and on man-made
complex networks such as power grids and supply chains.

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