How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

This handbook looks to provide academics and students with a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the phenomenon of innovation. Innovation spans a number of fields within the social sciences and humanities: Management, Economics, Geography, Sociology, Politics, Psychology, and History. Consequently, the rapidly increasing body of literature on innovation is characterized by a multitude of perspectives based on, or cutting across, existing disciplines and specializations. Scholars of innovation can come from such diverse starting points that much of this literature can be missed, and so constructive dialogues missed. The editors of The Oxford Handbook of Innovation have carefully selected and designed twenty-one contributions from leading academic experts within their particular field, each focusing on a specific aspect of innovation. These have been organized into four main sections, the first of which looks at the creation of innovations, with particular focus on firms and networks. Section Two provides an account of the wider systematic setting influencing innovation and the role of institutions and organizations in this context. Section Three explores some of the diversity in the working of innovation over time and across different sectors of the economy, and Section Four focuses on the consequences of innovation with respect to economic growth, international competitiveness, and employment. An introductory overview, concluding remarks, and guide to further reading for each chapter, make this handbook a key introduction and vital reference work for researchers, academics, and advanced students of innovation. Contributors to this volume - Jan Fagerberg, University of Oslo William Lazonick, INSEAD Walter W. Powell, Stanford University Keith Pavitt, SPRU Alice Lam, Brunel University Keith Smith, INTECH Charles Edquist, Linkoping David Mowery, University of California, Berkeley Mary O'Sullivan, INSEAD Ove Granstrand, Chalmers Bjorn Asheim, University of Lund Rajneesh Narula, Copenhagen Business School Antonello Zanfei, Urbino Kristine Bruland, University of Oslo Franco Malerba, University of Bocconi Nick Von Tunzelmann, SPRU Ian Miles, University of Manchester Bronwyn Hall, University of California, Berkeley Bart Verspagen , ECIS Francisco Louca, ISEG Manuel M. Godinho, ISEG Richard R. Nelson, Mario Pianta, Urbino Bengt-Ake Lundvall, Aalborg

The Oxford Handbook of Innovation

▶ Addresses a wide range of timely environment, economic and energy topics ▶ A forum to review, analyze and stimulate the development, testing and implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies at regional, national and global scales ▶ Contributes to real-time policy analysis and development as national and international policies and agreements are discussed and promulgated ▶ 94% of authors who answered a survey reported that they would definitely publish or probably publish in the journal again

Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change

Business Cycles: A Theoretical, Historical, and Statistical Analysis of the Capitalist Process.

This article is intended as a contribution to the ongoing conceptual development of Sustainability-Oriented Innovation (SOI) and provides initial guidance on becoming and being sustainable. We organize and integrate the diverse body of empirical literature relating to SOI and, in doing so, develop a synthesized conceptual framework onto which SOI practices and processes can be mapped. SOI 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 realising social and environmental value in addition to economic returns. A critical reading of previous literature relating to environmental management and sustainability reveals how little attention has been paid to SOI and what exists is only partial. In a review of 100 scholarly articles and 27 grey sources drawn from the period of the three Earth Summits (1992, 2002 and 2012), we address four specific deficiencies that have given rise to these limitations: the meaning of SOI, how it has been conceptualised, its treatment as a dichotomous phenomenon and a general failure to reflect more contemporary practices. We adopt a framework synthesis approach involving first constructing an initial architecture of the landscape grounded in previous studies which is subsequently iteratively tested, shaped, refined and reinforced into a model of SOI with data drawn from included studies: so advancing theoretical development in the field of SOI.

Sustainability‐oriented Innovation: A Systematic Review

The previous chapter analyzed the different drivers of and barriers to eco-innovation. In this chapter the aim is to identify those policy features and measures that can be implemented in order to help remove those barriers (or encourage the drivers) and enhance the uptake of eco-innovations. In order to do so, we have taken into account the theoretical and empirical literature on environmentally sound techno-institutional change, as well as certain policies currently implemented in the EU, the US and elsewhere.1 After justifying in section 4.2 why eco-innovation should be promoted publicly, section 4.3 outlines the policy approach to promote eco-innovations. Section 4.4 is devoted to the pinpointing of specific measures, whereas the following sections (4.5 and 4.6, respectively) discuss the most appropriate measures for tackling specific barriers to eco-innovation and how different types of eco-innovations are more likely to be promoted with different instruments. The chapter closes with some concluding remarks.

Policy Strategies to Promote Eco-Innovation

The scale of environmental problems, coupled with social inequalities and competitiveness challenges within the global economy, have raised increasing awareness of the need to change and renew existing technological production and social behavioural patterns. At best, such awareness may produce innovative responses that gradually move society along a more sustainable path. Analytical tools for such transformation have been developed in the field of environmental management, namely within frameworks such as eco-efficiency,1 industrial ecology2 and design for environment3 and more recently within the concept of eco-effectiveness,4 natural capital and biomimicry.5 Furthermore, the urgency for change has led to increasing application of the term ‘innovation’ in environmental management and policy. Despite the promise of eco-innovations, the term is also used in diverse contexts with different underlying connotations that may eventually diminish its practical value. Most commonly eco-innovation refers to new technologies that improve economic and environmental performance but also some definitions include organizational and social changes for improving competitiveness and sustainability and its social, economic and environmental pillars (see Box 2.1).

What is eco-innovation?

Although many potentially significant eco-innovations exist, many of them leading to competitive gains and social and environmental benefits, they are underused, that is, they do not diffuse easily and quickly in the economy. Many factors (barriers and/or absence of drivers) contribute to this.

Barriers to eco-innovation

Since the publication of Changing the Course, the introductory book on eco-efficiency by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s Steven Schmidheiny,1 companies have increasingly sought win-win solutions that combine simultaneous improvement in corporate competitiveness and environmental performance. Theoretical work supports this approach2 and argues that pollution is a sign of both environmental and economic inefficiency, and that many cost-effective environmental measures are inadequately exploited by managers. This divergence from neoclassical profit-maximization arises because managers are constrained by imperfect information, cognitive limitations and the existence of inappropriate organizational/incentive structures within companies.3

Business strategies for eco-innovation

The earlier chapters provided background and some practical guidance on how the eco-innovation can be dealt with. However, there are many kinds of eco-innovations and in practice various factors influencing on the innovation process are likely to intertwine in many ways. This led us to an important conclusion. Really understanding eco-innovation and its management and policy require research on individual cases of eco-innovation; learning from the experience. We strongly believe that the effective management and policy of eco-innovation depend much on the understanding of the specific conditions of the innovation. The use of a case study approach is particularly suitable for this purpose, as it is ideal for generating theoretical and pragmatic insights from empirical observations when little is known about a phenomenon and when there is disagreement within the literature.1 More specifically, we decided to conduct multiple cases, since multiple cases can increase the external validity, and, ultimately, the generalizability, of research findings.2

Pablo Río del González

Papers

Policy Strategies to Promote Eco-Innovation

What is eco-innovation?

Barriers to eco-innovation

Business strategies for eco-innovation

Eco-innovations in practice