Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Citation

Warren, L. (2009), "Sustainable Innovation and Entrepreneurship", International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 315-316. https://doi.org/10.1108/13552550910957382

This book seeks to draw together themes of entrepreneurship and innovation directed towards the construction of business models that “incorporate social equity, ecosystem stewardship, and design of environmentally and socially beneficial products and services” (p. 18). When I received the review copy of the book I was rather excited, as I was just about to launch a new undergraduate course module on Innovation, Technology and the Environment, part of a BSc in Management with Entrepreneurship. I was hopeful that there would be plenty of new material for me to enrich my emerging course materials: for a fleeting moment I wondered if I had perhaps found a good course text for the module, given the dearth of good material in this area, but I soon realised this was in fact a collection of research papers on quite disparate topics rather than a clarifying narrative. Still, I was optimistic that there would be good background here for selected readings, and, after considering the book in more detail, I am still of that mind. However, the range and level of topics covered makes for a rather fragmented read, and, if I am ruthlessly honest, in the end, I did not use any of the material here, either for the UG module, or for similarly pitched Masters courses. On balance, I am now more inclined to see the book as a collection of research papers that, in themselves, are very interesting, and provide a fast‐track into the literature of the subject in question. While limiting the overall usefulness of the book, it is still a worthwhile purchase to support thinking on entrepreneurship and innovation in a world where the sustainability agenda is increasingly becoming the agenda for inventors, entrepreneurs and those who fund them or invest in their companies.

Following an introduction from the editors, the book itself is divided into four unequally‐sized parts: Sustainable Entrepreneurship (five chapters); Sustainable Corporate Venturing and Intrapreneurship (two chapters); Customer Adoption of, and Marketing for, Sustainability Innovation (two chapters); and Investors and Policy (two chapters). The editors begin by suggesting that the corporate sustainability discourse needs to be addressed from an innovation and entrepreneurship angle (p. 2). They then take an historical perspective of the development of sustainability as an area of academic study, noting the variety of paradigms, theories, literatures and methodologies that have been employed to generate new knowledge and insight as different policy and regulatory agendas have arisen over time. By page 6, a subsection entitled “Putting the Pieces Together” is presented as five main research themes “around the emergence and market penetration of sustainability innovation”. At this point, I expected that themes would explicitly link to and support the different parts of the book, but that was not to be. Although the introduction did give some indication as to the coherence of the rest of the book, for me, too many hares were set running by the inclusion of quite a few concepts and ideas.

Turning to the sections, the diversity of the book overall is evident from the variety of themes addressed and methodological approaches. Part I, “Sustainable Entrepreneurship”, contains three conceptual, and two empirical papers: a framework for sustainability management and a positioning matrix of sustainable entrepreneurship; the involvement of SMEs in sustainable development; the development of business models in the context of material‐efficiency services; a survey of clean technology ventures in the UK; and finally the challenges of technology commercialisation are addressed from the perspective of a Dutch case study. Part II, “Sustainable Corporate Venturing and Intrapreneurship” contains two empirical pieces that pick up the theme of corporate approaches to environmental management. Part III, “Customer Adoption of and Marketing for Sustainability”, presents a survey concerning the relationship between environmental practices and customer satisfaction in the hotel industry. Another empirical paper in this section takes a qualitative approach to the adoption of an innovation in the concrete industry. The final part, “Investors and Policy”, considers how sustainability is shaped by investor and policy influences. The first chapter here investigates the linkages between environmental policy and corporate performance by looking at the effect of a specific regulation; the final chapter explores the link between energy policy and investor decisions to fund clean technology ventures through a series of qualitative interviews with venture capitalists.

Throughout this review so far, I have emphasised the diversity of the contributions and suggested that perhaps the overall outcome is therefore a little fragmented. This is so, but I do not wish to give an overly negative picture, when what has been achieved perhaps reflects the potential range of perspectives on what is still a dynamic emerging domain of study. As the authors themselves point out, there is much scope for future research, with suggestions for potential ways forward presented at the end of the introduction. In this context, the editors have brought together a strong team of researchers from a wide range of institutions and countries, including, in no particular order, the UK, Holland, Spain, Finland, Tunisia, Switzerland, Germany, Cyprus, Cameroon, Canada and the USA. All the papers are well written and scholarly. Some of them report on very significant research projects. A particularly strong feature of the chapters is the range of sources quoted at the end of each chapter. These references provide pathways into many different literatures that might well save much time for subsequent researchers.

To conclude, the book is aimed at “Academics, students, business professionals and NGOs”: quite a broad church! In my view, the book is very academic in its approach and tone, and while the outcomes of the research might be of interest beyond academe, I suspect that it is here that the main audience will be found. As to students, there may well be interest at Masters and PhD level across a range of disciplines, including economics, business, management, environmental science and the social sciences; again, this level of interdisciplinary interest is typical in an emergent domain.