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This paper aims to investigate sustainability-led innovation, focusing on the interplay between product and process innovation for sustainability goals and the underlying supplier–customer relationships. Thus, the paper delves into sustainability-led innovation and how it affects supplier–customer relationships, and vice versa, thus providing a twofold perspective.

The textile industry is the empirical context of this study, which is exploratory research based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with entrepreneurs, managers and experts in the textile industry.

In the textile industry, sustainability-led product innovation concerns mainly product durability and performance, product recyclability and the use of waste for new product development. Process innovation deals with circular economy, traceability and water and chemical use minimization. The paper also shows how sustainability-led innovation is implemented in more technical terms and regarding supplier–customer relationships.

The paper adopts an original perspective on how processes take place in the relationships between suppliers and customers, where there is no dominance of one actor, but innovation emerges from interdependence and interaction. Such perspective allows to provide an in-depth analysis of the supplier–customer relationships and underlying dynamics that affect sustainability-led innovation; moreover, the authors study how such innovation impacts supplier–customer relationships and the underlying relational dynamics. The value of the paper also stands in delivering a real representation of the innovation processes grounded in the textile industry.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the pivotal role of environmental innovations in driving sustainability practices within medium and large manufacturing firms operating in Uganda.

Using a cross-sectional and quantitative methodology, data were collected through a questionnaire survey involving 208 manufacturing companies. The smart partial least squares path modelling technique was used for the analysis.

The analysis unveils significant and positive associations. Specifically, product innovation exhibits a robust and affirmative relationship with sustainability practices. Similarly, the correlation between process innovation and sustainability practices emerges as statistically significant. Moreover, the findings underscore the noteworthy and constructive predictive influence of environmental innovation on sustainability practices.

These empirical results present substantial implications for theoretical frameworks and practical applications. From a policy perspective, the findings emphasise the importance of incentivising eco product and eco process innovations as potential drivers of eco-friendly practices. On the managerial front, strategic resource allocation and the adoption of integrated environmental innovation strategies are advocated, with the ultimate goal of enhancing sustainable business approaches within Uganda’s manufacturing subsector.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study represents the inaugural attempt to investigate the role of environmental innovations in elucidating sustainability practices within a least developed country. Notably, while all dimensions demonstrate significance, it is noteworthy that product innovation emerges as the more substantial contributor to the promotion of sustainability practices.

Pandemics are a serious challenge for humanity, as their social and economic impacts can be tremendous. This study aims to understand how innovation based in the sharing economy (SE) business models can contribute to overcoming the challenges arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Following a netnographic approach, the authors studied the computer-mediated social interactions of internet-based virtual innovation communities.

This study found that the SE business models contribute to overcome the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic by redistributing idle resources to lessen the impacts of confinement. This was achieved through process innovations and an innovative use of the network, which enabled fast-open and decentralized innovation processes, and quick implementation of innovations. This innovation process is based on a decentralized decision-making approach, clear rules, informal relationship among community members and open communication channels, as well as in evasive strategies to avoid facing challenges, institutional restrictions and barriers in the adoption of innovations.

This study was limited to a virtual innovation community of highly specialized and educated experts and nine community projects focused on institutional contexts of a developed country. Future research should focus on the institutional contexts of less specialized communities and developing countries and study other community innovation projects in pandemics to understand the processes of fast-open, decentralized and evasive innovation and the importance of relational capabilities for innovation in digital contexts.

The findings can guide innovation managers and public policymakers in implementing effective strategies and policies to overcome pandemic challenges using SE business models. This research also provides important insights into the types and processes of innovation in organizations that create solutions to overcome social and business challenges during pandemics. In addition, this study highlights the contributions of netnographic approaches to conducting research on innovation and in pandemic periods when measures of confinement are in place.

This study uses an innovative framework to map the types of innovation and highlights two different types of innovation processes.

This paper aims to explore the process of implementing solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in construction to contribute to the understanding of systemic innovation in construction.

The exploratory research presented is based on qualitative data collected in workshops and interviews with 76 construction- and solar-industry actors experienced in solar PV projects. Actor-specific barriers were identified and analysed using an abductive approach.

In light of established definitions of systemic innovation, the process of implementing solar PV systems in construction involves challenges regarding technical and material issues, competencies, and informal and formal institutions. The specificities of this case highlight the necessity of paying attention to details in the process and to develop knowledge of systemic innovation in construction since the industry’s involvement in addressing societal challenges related to the energy transition will require implementing such innovations much more in the future.

New knowledge of solar PV systems as an innovation in professional construction is collected, enabling the adaptation of management strategies for its implementation. This knowledge can also be applied generally to other challenges encountered in highly systemic innovation implementation. Solar industry actors can gain an understanding of solar-specific challenges for the construction industry, challenges for which they must adapt their activities.

The exploration of actor-specific experiences of solar PV projects has resulted in a novel understanding of this specific innovation and its implementation. The findings illustrate a case of a high level of systemic innovation and the need to use a finer-grained scale for classification when studying innovation in construction.

This study aims to explore how not-for-profit organisations (NFPs) adopt service innovation and improve their employee resilience capabilities as a response to environmental changes arising from marketisation of public services.

Using a multiple case-study research design, this study involved 32 interviews with frontline employees working in a not-for-profit care-providing organisation.

This study finds that the development of absorptive capacity can facilitate service innovation adoption in NFPs and improve employee resilience in times of transition.

This study offers theoretical insights on service innovation, absorptive capacity and employee resilience in NFPs. It makes practical recommendations that will enable NFPs to help frontline employees better adopt service innovation practices in business models endorsed by the private sector.

Although businesses continue to take up artificial intelligence (AI), concerns remain that companies are not realising the full value of their investments. The study aims to provide insights into how AI creates business value by investigating the mediating role of Business Process Management (BPM) capabilities.

The integrative model of IT Business Value was contextualised, and structural equation modelling was applied to validate the proposed serial multiple mediation model using a sample of 448 organisations based in the EU.

The results validate the proposed serial multiple mediation model according to which AI adoption increases organisational performance through decision-making and business process performance. Process automation, organisational learning and process innovation are significant complementary partial mediators, thereby shedding light on how AI creates business value.

In pursuing a complex nomological framework, multiple perspectives on realising business value from AI investments were incorporated. Several moderators presenting complementary organisational resources (e.g. culture, digital maturity, BPM maturity) could be included to identify behaviour in more complex relationships. The ethical and moral issues surrounding AI and its use could also be examined.

The provided insights can help guide organisations towards the most promising AI activities of process automation with AI-enabled decision-making, organisational learning and process innovation to yield business value.

While previous research assumed a moderated relationship, this study extends the growing literature on AI business value by empirically investigating a comprehensive nomological network that links AI adoption to organisational performance in a BPM setting.

This study aims to investigate how configurations of boundary objects (BOs) support innovation teams in developing innovative product concepts. Specifically, it explores the effectiveness of different artefact configurations in facilitating collaboration and bridging knowledge boundaries during the concept development process.

The research is based on data from ten undergraduate innovation teams working with an industry partner in a creative industry. Six categories of BOs are identified, which serve as tools for collaboration. The study applies fsQCA (fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis) to analyse the configurations employed by the teams to bridge knowledge boundaries and support the development of innovative product concepts.

The findings of the study reveal two distinct groups of configurations: product envisioning and product design. The configurations within the “product envisioning” group support the activities of visioning and pivoting, enabling teams to innovate the product concept by altering the product vision. On the other hand, the configurations within the “product design” group facilitate experimenting, modelling and prototyping, allowing teams to design the attributes of the innovative product concept while maintaining the product vision.

This research contributes to the field of innovation by providing insights into the role of BOs and their configurations in supporting innovation teams during concept development. The results suggest that configurations of “product envisioning” support bridging semantic knowledge boundaries, while configurations within “product design” bridge pragmatic knowledge boundaries. This understanding contributes to the broader field of knowledge integration and innovation in design contexts.

Industry 4.0 defines the application of digital technologies on business infrastructure and processes. With the increasing need to take into account the social and environmental impact of technologies, the concept of Society 5.0 has been proposed to restore the centrality of humans in the proper utilization of technology for the exploitation of innovation opportunities. Despite the identification of humans, resilience and sustainability as the key dimensions of Society 5.0, the definition of the key factors that can enable Innovation in the light of 5.0 principles has not been yet assessed.

An SLR, followed by a content analysis of results and a clustering of the main topics, is performed to (1) identify the key domains and dimensions of the Industry 5.0 paradigm; (2) understand their impact on Innovation 5.0; (3) discuss and reflect on the resulting implications for research, managerial practices and the policy-making process.

The findings allow the elaboration of a multileveled framework to redefine Innovation through the 5.0 paradigm by advancing the need to integrate ICT and technology (Industry 5.0) with the human-centric, social and knowledge-based dimensions (Society 5.0).

The study detects guidelines for managers, entrepreneurs and policy-makers in the adoption of effective strategies to promote human resources and knowledge management for the attainment of multiple innovation outcomes (from technological to data-driven and societal innovation).

The purpose of this paper is to create a model that connects drivers between organizational innovation and business model innovation (BMI) to guide empirical research and the design of innovation management strategies.

The model was designed based on the results of a systematic literature review over the past 25 years that provides common predictor variables to build bridges between these two types of innovations.

It is a conceptual relationship between organizational innovation and BMI based on processes, new structures and customer relationship management. Moreover, there are five bridges from common predictors: strategy, top management, exploratory learning, technological innovation and environmental complexity.

The relationships between organizational innovation and BMI have been neglected in the literature. The model fills this gap by proposing hypotheses for empirical research and critical variables and relationships to steer organizational and business model innovation.

This study's main goal is to expand the theoretical perspective and discuss the unique influence of age and tenure on R&D teams' incremental innovation outcomes. We answer scholars call for additional research on age-related processes by testing pathways through which older employees can benefit organizational performance. The current study advances the literature by relating to the context-related process of cohesion and investigating its moderating influence on the relationship between team antecedents (i.e. age and tenure) and incremental innovation.

This research sample consists of 108 R&D teams operating in six mature high-tech organizations located in Israel. The participating entities design and manufacture state-of-the-art innovations in the semiconductors, communications and information technology sectors. The number of teams in each participating entity was 35, 21, 21, 19, 7 and 5, respectively. The sample consisted of 443 R&D employees and 212 team leaders/managers. The total sample comprised 655 participants. Team members filled out questionnaires to assess the independent variables. The dependent-variable questionnaire focusing on the team's incremental innovation accomplishments was completed by two managers for each team.

We found a negative association between team members' age and incremental innovation. Hypothesis 2, which predicted a positive association between team members' tenure and incremental innovation, was marginally supported. The interaction between team members' age and team members' tenure on incremental innovation was marginally supported. Hypothesis 4, which predicted that the negative association between team members' age and incremental innovation would be mitigated when the level of team cohesion is low, was supported. Hypothesis 5, which assumed that the positive association between team members' tenure and incremental innovation would be stronger when the level of cohesion is high, was supported.

This research's results regarding the negative influence of R&D employees' age on incremental innovation are crucial for managers and team leaders in the high-tech industry. Following the age stereotype, many of them avoid recruiting and assigning older employees to R&D teams dealing in innovation creation and development. They should expand their perspective and consider additional attributes in order to assign the employees that best match the team's mission. The results show that R&D teams produce high and similar levels of incremental innovation when the level of team members' tenure is high, regardless of their age.

This study benefited from a relatively high number of respondents and teams from leading high-tech organizations, a high response rate and a research design that made it possible to establish a linkage between data on the independent variables and data on incremental innovation collected from separate independent sources. The data on the dependent variable—incremental innovation—was based on independent assessments made by two managers for each team. The study's measurements were based on leading studies on innovation.