Green innovation in technology

and innovation management an

exploratory literature review1
Tim Schiederig, Frank Tietze and
Cornelius Herstatt
Institute for Technology and Innovation Management, Hamburg University of Technology,
Schwarzenbergstrasse 95, 21073 Hamburg, Germany. [email protected]; [email protected];
[email protected]

The importance of green innovation management is growing both in practice and in

academia. This paper provides a current overview of the existing body of literature in the
field of green innovations, identifying the most active scholars, institutions and relevant
publications. It also contributes to a clarification of the concept green innovation. The
review explains that three different notions of green, eco/ecological and environmental
innovation are used largely synonymously, while the notion of sustainable innovation broadens the concept and includes a social dimension. According to this review, the most active
scholars are situated in Europe (especially the Netherlands, Italy and Germany). A ranking
is provided of innovation management journals by their total number of green innovation
publications. The paper stimulates discussion about the adequacy of research in this subject
area (managing green innovation) and the dearth of comprehensive literature reviews.

1. Introduction

or several years, the importance of the management of green innovations has been growing,
both in practice and in academia. Although major
engineering disciplines already dedicate significant
research to sustainable solutions (e.g. for renewable
energy such as solar and wind power), recently the
German Federal Ministry for Education and
Research stated that there is not much research
ongoing in the management discipline (Bundesministerium fuer Bildung und Forschung, 2010). This is
despite the emergence of some promising concepts.
Andersen (2008, p. 3) states that environmental
innovation research is still in its early phase, and
there are worldwide very few actual innovation

180

researchers working with environmental issues. Particularly in the innovation management field, we are
aware of only a few scholars who conduct research
dedicated to new product/service development of
green innovations.
To our knowledge, there is no recent comprehensive literature review of the status quo in this domain.
In addition, there is confusion about different notions
and terminology to describe innovations that have a
reduced negative impact on the environment. The
most prominent notions used in the literature to
describe this innovation type are green, eco,
environmental and sustainable.
With a focus on innovation management, this
paper has two objectives. First, it aims to contribute
to a clarification of the concept green innovation.

R&D Management 42, 2, 2012. 2012 The Authors. R&D Management 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main St, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.

Green innovation in technology and innovation management

Second, it aims to provide an overview of the existing
body of literature in the field of green innovations,
and identify the most active scholars, institutions and
relevant publications in the field.
The research is divided into two sections: First,
different definitions are presented for the four
notions associated with the concept: green innovation, eco/ecological innovation, sustainable innovation and environmental innovation. We discuss and
compare those notions to create an understanding of
the differences and similarities in the conceptualizations. Second, we provide results from a quantitative
analysis of the available literature using the four
notions. For this analysis, we compiled a publication
dataset from the Google Scholar (GS) database. We
present the findings from a three-level analysis, that
is, on an aggregate level, then narrow it to the field of
Business, Administration, Economics and Finance,
and finally focus on the scientific area of innovation
management.
The remainder of this paper is structured as
follows. The next section is dedicated to defining and
discussing the four different notions used to describe
innovations with a reduced negative environmental
impact. The third section describes the approach
used to compile and analyze the publication data
resulting from our literature review. Findings are
presented in the fourth section. The fifth section
discusses those findings, and the sixth section concludes the paper and provides recommendations for
future research.

2. Clarifying the concept of

green innovation
Before reviewing the literature, a clarification of
the concept of green innovation was needed to
understand which literature must be included in our
analysis. We quickly realized that other notions (i.e.
ecological innovation, environmental innovation and
sustainable innovation) are used by scholars. Therefore, we decided at first to discuss the differences
and similarities among these notions. In the following, we briefly review a number of widely cited
definitions.
According to Church et al. (2008, p. 3), citing
Dresner (2008, p. 30), the term sustainable development was first used in 1980 by the International
Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural
Resources in their World Conservation Strategy
report. The report defines sustainable development
as the integration of conservation and development
to ensure that modifications to the planet do indeed
secure the survival and well-being of all people. As
2012 The Authors
R&D Management 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

stated in several publications (e.g. Dixon and Fallon,

1989; Mebratu, 1998), the notion of sustainable
development was essentially coined by the Brundtland report, commissioned by the United Nations
(UN) where it is defined as meeting the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own needs. The concept of
sustainable development does imply limits not
absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present
state of technology and social organization on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities
(Brundtland, 1987, p. 24).
A number of definitions exist for the notion ecoinnovation. One of the first, Fussler and James
(1996) define eco-innovations as new products and
processes which provide customer and business
value but significantly decrease environmental
impacts (cited from Bartlett and Trifilova, 2010,
p. 2). In a similar manner, Kemp and Pearson (2007,
p. 3) define eco-innovation 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.
The Europe INNOVA panel concludes that ecoinnovation means the creation of novel and competitively priced goods, processes, systems, services, and
procedures that can satisfy human needs and bring
quality of life to all people with a life-cycle-wide
minimal use of natural resources (material including
energy carriers, and surface area) per unit output, and
a minimal release of toxic substances (cited from
Reid and Miedzinski, 2008, p. 7). Based on the
industrial dynamics perspective, Andersen (2008, p.
5) defines eco-innovation as innovations which are
able to attract green rents on the market. (. . .) the
concept is closely related to competitiveness and
makes no claim on the greenness of various innovations. The focus of eco-innovation research should
be on the degree to which environmental issues
are becoming integrated into the economic process.
In line with this argumentation is the definition from
the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) (2009, p. 40). Accordingly,
eco-innovation is defined as the creation or implementation of new, or significantly improved, products (goods and services), processes, marketing
methods, organisational structures and institutional
arrangements which with or without intent lead to
environmental improvements compared to relevant
alternatives. Building on these two definitions,
R&D Management 42, 2, 2012

181

Tim Schiederig, Frank Tietze and Cornelius Herstatt

Arundel and Kemp (2009, p. 34) conclude that ecoinnovation is a new concept of great importance to
business and policy makers. It is about innovations
with lower environmental impact than relevant alternatives. The innovations may be technological or
non-technological (organizational, institutional or
marketing-based). Eco-innovations can be motivated
by economic or environmental considerations. The
former includes objectives to reduce resource, pollution control, or waste management costs, or to sell
into the world market for eco-products.
In comparison to the eco-innovation definitions,
Oltra and Saint Jean (2009, p. 567) define environmental innovation as innovations that consist of
new or modified processes, practices, systems and
products which benefit the environment and so contribute to environmental sustainability. To define
the notion green innovation, Driessen and Hillebrand (2002, p. 344) apply a rather pragmatic
definition, stating that it does not have to be developed with the goal of reducing the environmental
burden. (. . .) It does however, yield significant environmental benefits. Chen et al. (2006, p. 534)
define green innovation as hardware or 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. To summarize, the
abovementioned definitions of the four notions
sustainable, eco, environmental and green innovation show minor differences in their descriptive precision. With regard to content, they seem to examine
the same topic and can be used largely interchangeably. Nevertheless, we identified six important
aspects in the different definitions:
(1) Innovation object: Product, process, service,
method;
(2) Market orientation: Satisfy needs/be competitive
on the market;
(3) Environmental aspect: Reduce negative impact
(optimum = zero impact);
(4) Phase: Full life cycle must be considered (for
material flow reduction);
(5) Impulse: Intention for reduction may be economical or ecological; and
(6) Level: Setting a new innovation/green standard
to the firm.
The first two aspects have a general character and
apply to nearly all innovation definitions, stating
that the innovation object may be a product,
process, service or method (e.g. business model),
and that an innovation should satisfy a users need
or solve a problem, and therefore be competitive on
182

R&D Management 42, 2, 2012

the market. Concerning the environmental aspect,

all cited definitions agree that the innovation should
have a reduced negative impact (i.e. lower negative
externalities). The optimum would be an innovation
with no negative impact on the environment. This
aspect requires the comparison to existing intra- or
interorganizational alternatives, and may therefore
only be specified relatively and temporarily. The
fourth aspect appears in only two of the definitions,
by Kemp and Pearson (2007) and Reid and
Miedzinski (2008). These authors call explicitly for
a full life cycle analysis and a thorough analysis of
all input and output factors. The aim is to reduce
resource consumption. On this particular point,
there may well be some differentiation between the
notions as scholars using the notion eco-innovation
tend to call for precise impact analysis, whereas
scholars using the term green innovation remain at
a shallow level. Fifth, the definitions emphasize that
the intention for the reduction may be economical
or ecological, stating that, for example, the reduction of material usage in a new product development could have different causes. The last aspect
covers problems related to the definition of innovation and environment-friendly as both of these are
relative and without absolute value (e.g. any innovation could be new to the world, industry or firm).
To our understanding, the notions are interpreted as
setting a new innovation/green standard at the firm
level.
The last two aspects are the main reasons for a
scientific discussion as they prevent researchers
clearly separating green and non-green innovations,
and determining the degree of greenness. Due to
the numerous types of innovation, these fuzzy
aspects allow nearly all firms to be included in the
definition of a green innovator (see also Andersen,
2008). Comparing the UN Brundtland definition
for sustainability with the other three notions, the
most important difference in this definition is the
consideration of the ecological AND social dimension. The development of sustainable innovations,
therefore, implements economical, ecological and
social aspects. This is, to our understanding, the
main difference between sustainable and the other
three notions, which only include the former two
aspects.
Having discussed the four different notions based
on existing definitions and concluded that they are
often used synonymously, we decided to include all
of them in our literature review. In the following, we
outline our research approach before we report our
findings to understand the development of the field in
recent years, and to identify the most active scholars,
institutions and important contributions.
2012 The Authors
R&D Management 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Green innovation in technology and innovation management

3. Research approach
For the literature review, data were collected from the
GS database in November 2010. Publications were
collected using the search strings green innovation,
eco innovation, environmental innovation and
sustainable innovation. With this approach, we
decided to search by topic and not by (top) journal to
include all published articles in this field as suggested by Webster and Watson (2002). Our total
dataset includes 8,516 publications. The extracted
publication types include journals, conference proceedings, book(-chapters), additional journals and
working publications. The data were extracted with
the software Publish or Perish (v3.1.3926).
Instead of using the Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge database, which is commonly used as source of
bibliometric data, we decided to use the GS database
because of its broader data coverage (e.g. including
conference proceedings, working papers, books)
rather than just the strict ISI criteria. This was a
compromise decision as the disadvantage of our
approach is that the GS database coverage is not
as strictly methodological than the ISI database
(Harzing and Wal, 2007, p. 1). However, Harzing and
Wal (2007) show that an analysis based on GS data
results in more comprehensive citation coverage, particularly in the field of management and international
business. To verify whether the data we extracted
from the GS database cover the relevant literature, we
compared our results with those extracted from the
Thomson ISI Web of Knowledge database on an
aggregated level. The comparison of the GS data
(8,516 results) with the data extracted from the ISI
database (176 results) results reveals that, depending
on the different notions, between 67% and 86% of
the ISI publications are included in our dataset.
The extracted publications were analyzed in a
three-level analysis using bibliographic information
of the authors, publication years, journal names and
citation frequency. A first-level analysis provides an
overview investigating the development of publications using the four notions on an aggregated level but
also for seven scientific areas as available from GS.
The second level of our analysis narrows and deepens
the analysis to the specific discipline business,
administration, finance, economics (BAFE). The
third level of our analysis focuses on publications
published in selected journals associated with innovation management. In this analysis, we included 10
journals listed in the sub-discipline Management
of Technology and Innovation of the 2009 VHB
ranking of the German Academic Association for
Business Research (Schrader and Hennig-Thurau,
2009), and 15 journals listed in the subject area
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innovation of the 2011 Harzing meta-ranking that is

based on 19 international rankings (Harzing, 2011).

4. Findings of the quantitative analysis

The first level of our analysis focuses on the aggregated number of publications and the four different
notions. Among the total number of 8,516 publications in our dataset, 40.7% (3,469) apply the
notion environmental innovation, 31.9% (2,716)
the notion sustainable innovation, 17.6% (1,495)
eco-innovation and 9.8% (836) the notion green
innovation. It appears that more than 80% of the
publications use only one notion, indicating that
the notions are used consistently within individual
publications. Only in a limited number of publications (between 1.6% and 6.2%) the authors use
multiple notions, with the notions green- and ecoinnovation representing the highest value. Figure 1
reveals the chronological development of the publications using the four different notions.
Figure 1 reveals that prior to 1990, little research
was conducted as indicated by the low number of
annual publications (i.e. less than 10 per year).2 Until
1997, research favored the notion environmental
innovation. Since 2000, the notion sustainable
innovation became fashionable and is currently the
predominant term (more than 400 publications
in 2009). Since 2005, the notions green and eco
innovation became increasingly used in scientific
publications, with an average of 150 and 230 publications, respectively, per year.
GS clusters publications in seven disciplines. The
majority of publications in our dataset (62.6%)
relates to the field BAFE. Meanwhile, 25.0% of all
publications relate to the field social sciences, arts,
humanities (SAH), followed by 7.9% of the publications related to the field engineering, computer
sciences and mathematics (ECSM). Publications in
the fields biology, life science, environmental
science (2.0%), chemistry and material science
(1.4%), physics, astronomy, planetary science
(1.0%) and medicine, pharmacology, veterinary
science (0.3%) play only minor roles. Our results
show that the usage of the four notions is almost
equally distributed across the seven scientific disciplines used by GS. Our results indicate that the
notion sustainable is mainly used in publications
related to the ECSM and SAH disciplines, while
the notion environmental is associated primarily
with the fields SAH and BAFE.
The second level of our analysis focuses on the
BAFE field. In total, 4,695 publications were identified as related to this discipline. Papers published
R&D Management 42, 2, 2012

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Tim Schiederig, Frank Tietze and Cornelius Herstatt

450
400
350
300
250
200
150
100
50

Green

Eco

Environmental

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

Sustainable

Figure 1. Development of annual publications.

in the BAFE field are scattered across several

hundred journals. Table 1 reveals that 15 journals
have published 10 or more of the articles included
in our sample. Together, these journals published
542 articles, equivalent to 11.5% of the BAFE publications. With 135 articles, by far, the top ranking
journal is the Journal of Cleaner Production, followed by Business Strategy and the Environment
with 74 articles, hence about half of the number of
the top-ranked journal. Six journals have published
20 or more but less than 50 papers. Research Policy
and Technovation, two prominent journals in the
innovation management field, appear on rank seven
and eight.
Looking more closely at the most cited articles,
Table 2 lists the BAFE-related articles with 20 or
more annual citations. From these 29 papers, three
articles appear to have more than 100 annual citations, which were all originally published in the mid/
end of the 1990s. While the most cited paper by
David J. Teece, Gary Pisano and Amy Shuen (1997)
is not specifically dedicated to an environmental
topic, the papers of John Elkington (1998), and
Michael E. Porter and Claas van der Linde (1995),
which rank second and third, are. Three authors have
multiple papers either as first or coauthors among
these 29 papers.3 Four papers were published by
Adam B. Jaffe, three by Richard G. Newell and two
by Adrian Smith. The earliest paper appeared in 1989
by Scott R. Milliman, a US scholar affiliated with the
Department of Economics at James Madison University, Virginia. From the top cited articles, five publi184

R&D Management 42, 2, 2012

cations appeared in the Strategic Management

Journal, four papers among were published in
Research Policy and three in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.
Table 3 reveals the most active scholars in the
BAFE field. Leading by number of publications is
FEE Mattei, representing an Italian foundation dedicated to climate change research and publishing
papers in the name of the foundation. Among the top
five active scholars are two further Italian researchers. Massimiliano Mazzanti from the University
of Ferrara ranks third and Carlo Carraro from the
University of Venice ranks fifth. Three German institutions are present. The Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) ranks four, the University of
Applied Sciences in Augsburg ranks seven, with a
similar number of publications as Marcus Wagner
from Julius Maximilian University of Wrzburg.
Among the top 10 list are also two Dutch researchers
from Maastricht University and Utrecht University,
ranking second and tenth, respectively. A researcher
of the OECD is also present, sharing rank seven with
two German researchers. Only one non-European
researcher is present on this list (and is ranked sixth);
he is from the United States and is primarily affiliated with his own consulting firm.
The third level of our analysis focuses on publications particularly related to the field of innovation
management. Selecting only papers published in the
25 innovation management journals that are included
in the two rankings (VHB and Harzing), we identified 136 papers; these are equivalent to 2% of the
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Green innovation in technology and innovation management

Table 1. Top journals with 10 or more BAFE papers
Rank

Journal name

Number of
papers

Share of
total (%)

Cum share
of total (%)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
9
10
11
12
12
13
13
14
14
15

Journal of Cleaner Production

Business Strategy and the Environment
Energy Policy
Ecological Economics
Environmental Quality Management
Journal of Business Ethics
Research Policy
Technovation
Environmental and Resource Economics
Futures
The Journal of Sustainable Product Design
Science
Journal of Industrial Ecology
Journal of Environmental Management
European Environment
Technology Analysis & Strategic Management
Commercial Research
Energy Economics
Energy & Environment
Others
Total

135
74
43
38
36
25
22
20
17
17
16
15
14
14
12
12
11
11
10
4.153
4.695

2.88
1.58
0.92
0.81
0.77
0.53
0.47
0.43
0.36
0.36
0.34
0.32
0.30
0.30
0.26
0.26
0.23
0.23
0.21
88.46

2.88
4.45
5.37
6.18
6.94
7.48
7.94
8.37
8.73
9.09
9.44
9.76
10.05
10.35
10.61
10.86
11.10
11.33
11.54
100.00

BAFE, business, administration, finance, economics.

total number of publications in our dataset. After a

pioneering publication by Harwood (1977), not much
research was published in the innovation management field until the late 1990s, reflecting the general
publication development pattern depicted in
Figure 1. An early paper in the R&D Management
journal can perhaps be mentioned (Winn and Roome,
1993), especially because it was a specialized status
review at that time. Just around the start of the new
century, annual publication numbers started to
increase to about 25 in 2010. We analyzed the 136
publications with regard to the journals in which they
were published, the authors and their affiliated institutions, as well as the articles citations as impact
measure. The 136 were published in 23 different
journals. Table 4 shows the journals in which at least
three publications appeared. In these 11 journals, 118
papers were published, accounting for 86.8% of all
innovation management publications. Table 4 reveals
further that the three most active journals in the field
are Technological Forecasting and Social Change
with 32 publications (23.5%), Research Policy with
24 publications (17.7%) and Technovation with 18
publications (13.2%). In total, the publications in
2012 The Authors
R&D Management 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

these three journals account for 54.4% of all innovation management-related publications.
Of course, it should be noted that the total annual
number of publications in each journal varies widely
(by more than 100%) so the table does not necessarily reflect a strategic priority of any journal.
When analyzing the 136 papers with regard to
papers published by the same author (independent
whether they appear as first or coauthor), we identified only five scholars who published multiple
articles (i.e. more than one). These include Marko P.
Hekkert, Simona O. Negro and Roald A.A. Suurs,
all based at Utrecht University in the Netherlands;
Adrian Smith from the Environment and Energy
Programme, SPRU (Science and Technology Policy
Research) at the Freeman Centre, University of
Sussex; and Stefan Kuhlmann at the University of
Twente, the Netherlands. Together, these authors
published 10 articles, with only two of them publishing three articles. With five papers, the majority of
them were published by the scholars of the Department of Innovation and Environmental Science at
Utrecht University (Table 5). From these 10 articles,
five were published in Technology Forecasting and
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Tim Schiederig, Frank Tietze and Cornelius Herstatt

Table 2. BAFE articles with 20 or more annual citations
Rank

Cites

Cites/year

Pub
year

First author
name

Title

Journal

8,775

626,79

1997

D. J. Teece

Strategic Management Journal

1,548

119,08

1998

J. Elkington

1,780

111,25

1995

M. E. Porter

488

54,22

2002

B. . Lundvall

588

53,45

2000

P. Bansal

47

47,00

2010

N. Johnstone

598

46,00

1998

D. Revelt

559

43,00

1998

S. Sharma

343

42,88

2003

A. B. Jaffe

10

693

40,76

1994

R. A. Wolfe

11

307

38,38

2003

D.G. Hoopes

12

325

36,11

2002

T. Dyllick

13

213

35,50

2005

A. Smith

14

205

34,17

2005

A. B. Jaffe

15

255

31,88

2003

K. Buysse

16

274

30,44

2002

A. B. Jaffe

17

310

28,18

2000

R. K. Chandy

18

84

28,00

2008

J. Markard

Dynamic capabilities and

strategic management
Partnerships from cannibals
with forks: the triple bottom
line of 21st century business
Toward a new conception of the
environment-competitiveness
relationship
National systems of production,
innovation and competence
building
Why companies go green: a
model of ecological
responsiveness
Renewable energy policies and
technological innovation:
evidence based on patent
counts
Mixed logit with repeated
choices: households choices
of appliance efficiency level
Proactive corporate
environmental strategy and
the development of
competitively valuable
organizational capabilities
Technological change and the
environment
Organizational innovation:
review, critique and suggested
research directions
Guest editors introduction to
the special issue: why is there
a resource-based view?
Toward a theory of
competitive heterogeneity
Beyond the business case for
corporate sustainability
The governance of sustainable
socio-technical transitions
A tale of two market failures:
technology and environmental
policy
Proactive environmental
strategies: a stakeholder
management perspective
Environmental policy and
technological change
The incumbents curse?
Incumbency, size, and radical
product innovation
Technological innovation
systems and the multi-level
perspective: towards an
integrated framework

186

R&D Management 42, 2, 2012

Environmental Quality
Management
The Journal of Economic
Perspectives
Research Policy

Academy of Management
Journal
Environmental and Resource
Economics

Review of Economics and

Statistics
Strategic Management Journal

Handbook of Environmental
Economics
Journal of Management Studies

Strategic Management Journal

Business Strategy and the

Environment
Research Policy
Ecological Economics

Strategic Management Journal

Environmental and Resource

Economics
The Journal of Marketing

Research Policy

2012 The Authors

R&D Management 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Green innovation in technology and innovation management

Table 2. (Contd.)
Rank

Cites

Cites/year

Pub
year

First author
name

Title

Journal

19

193

27,57

2004

D. Popp

Journal of Environmental
Economics and Management

20

215

26,88

2003

C. Fischer

21

78

26,00

2008

S. Seuring

22

571

25,95

1989

S. R. Milliman

23

355

25,36

1997

A. B. Jaffe

24

76

25,33

2008

S. Ambec

25

290

24,17

1999

A. Gerybadze

26

382

23,88

1995

P. Shrivastava

27

191

23,88

2003

J. Sarkis

28

128

21,33

2005

R. Kemp

29

234

21,27

2000

K. Rennings

ENTICE: endogenous
technological change in the
DICE model of global
warming
Instrument choice for
environmental protection
when technological
innovation is endogenous
From a literature review to a
conceptual framework for
sustainable supply chain
management
Firm incentives to promote
technological change in
pollution control
Environmental regulation and
innovation: A panel data
study
Does it pay to be green? A
systematic overview
Globalization of R&D: recent
changes in the management
of innovation in transnational
corporations
Environmental technologies and
competitive advantage
A strategic decision framework
for green supply chain
management
The management of the
co-evolution of technical,
environmental and social
systems
Redefining innovation:
eco-innovation research and
the contribution from
ecological economics

Journal of Environmental
Economics and Management

Journal of Cleaner Production

Journal of Environmental
Economics and Management
Review of Economics and
Statistics
Academy of Management
Perspectives
Research Policy

Strategic Management Journal

Journal of Cleaner Production

Towards Environmental
Innovation Systems

Ecological Economics

BAFE, business, administration, finance, economics.

Social Change, three in Research Policy and two in

Science and Public Policy. This pattern, at least,
reflects two of the three top journals that publish
green innovation papers in the innovation management field.
When analyzing the citations of the 136 papers, we
found that five papers have more than 100 total citations, nine papers have 50 or more citations but less
than 100 citations, and 44 papers have between 10
and 50 citations. Twenty-one papers have zero citations. When analyzing the annual citations, only one
paper has more than 50 annual citations. Twelve
papers have 10 or more annual citations, but less than
2012 The Authors
R&D Management 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

50 citations. These papers are listed in Table 6. Furthermore, 44 papers have annual citations below one.
It appears that not all of the highly cited articles
listed in Table 6 are closely related to the topic of
green innovation, and particularly managerial issues.
Only the titles of the four articles by Horbach (2008),
Lanjouw and Mody (1996), Foxon et al. (2010), and
Faber and Frenken (2009) clearly indicate a relation
to green innovation, although not even on a managerial, intrafirm level, but rather on a national, policy
level. The title of the paper by Smith et al. (2005)
rather indicates a relation to the social dimension of
innovations.
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Table 3. Top 10 BAFE authors and institutions
Rank

Author name

Number of
papers

Institution

1
2

F. E. E. Mattei
Ren Kemp

159
42

27

Massimiliano
Mazzanti
Klaus Rennings

Carlo Carraro

22

6
7

Richard MacLean
Jens Horbach

20
17

Marcus Wagner

17

Nick Johnstone

17

10

Marko Hekkert

15

Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei Climate Modelling Institute, Italy

Professor of Innovation and Sustainable Development, International Centre for
Integrated Assessment and Sustainable Development (ICIS), Maastricht
University, The Netherlands
Dipartimento di Economia Istituzioni Territorio, Faculty of Economics,
University of Ferrara, Italy
Vice-head of the Department Environmental and Resource Economics,
Environmental Management, Centre for European Economic Research
(ZEW), Germany
President of and Professor of Environmental Economics and Econometrics,
University of Venice, Italy
Director of Richard MacLean & Associates, LLC, Flagstaff, AZ
Former ZEW, since 2010 Professor at the Faculty of Business, University of
Applied Sciences Augsburg, Germany
Julius Maximilian University of Wrzburg, Professor for Entrepreneurship and
Corporate Growth, Germany
Empirical Policy Analysis Unit, National Policies Division, OECD
Environment Directorate
Professor of Dynamics of Innovation Systems, Department of Innovation and
Environmental Science, Utrecht University, The Netherlands

23

BAFE, business, administration, finance, economics.

Table 4. Top innovation management journals with at least three publications

Rank

Journal name

Number of
papers

Share of
total (%)

Cum share
of total (%)

1
2
3
4
4
5
6
6
7
7
8

Technological Forecasting and Social Change

Research Policy
Technovation
Journal of Business Venturing
R&D Management
International Journal of Technology Management
Journal of Product Innovation Management
Science and Public Policy
European Journal of Innovation
Creativity and Innovation Management
European Journal of Innovation Management
Others
Total

32
24
18
8
8
7
5
5
4
4
3
18
136

23.53
17.65
13.24
5.88
5.88
5.15
3.68
3.68
2.94
2.94
2.21
13.24

23.53
41.18
54.41
60.29
66.18
71.32
75.00
78.68
81.62
84.56
86.76
100.00

5. Discussion
The paper shows that the concept of green innovation
is closely related to three other notions sustainable
innovation, environmental innovation and ecological innovation. When comparing the various
definitions of these four notions, we found only
minor conceptual differences. We identified six
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aspects that are incorporated in the different definitions and found one key aspect that differentiates the
conceptualization of sustainable innovation from the
other three notions. In its original meaning, sustainable innovation includes a social dimension as well
as the ecological dimension (i.e. social innovations).
But several scholars, such as Scherhorn et al. (1997),
eradicate this border.
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Green innovation in technology and innovation management

Table 5. Authors with multiple papers
Marko P. Hekkert (Professor for Dynamics of Innovation Systems)
Simona O. Negro (Assistant Professor)
Roald A.A. Suurs (PhD Student)
Department of Innovation and Environmental Science, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Hekkert, M. P. and S. O. Negro (2009). Functions of innovation systems as a framework to understand sustainable
technological change: Empirical evidence for earlier claims. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 76(4):
584594.
Meijer, I. S. M., M. P. Hekkert, et al. (2007). How perceived uncertainties influence transitions; the case of micro-CHP
in the Netherlands. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 74(4): 519537.
Negro, S. O., M. P. Hekkert, et al. (2008). Stimulating renewable energy technologies by innovation policy. Science
and Public Policy 35(6): 403416.
Negro, S. O., R. A. A. Suurs, et al. (2008). The bumpy road of biomass gasification in the Netherlands: Explaining the
rise and fall of an emerging innovation system. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 75(1): 5777.
Suurs, R. A. A. and M. P. Hekkert (2009). Cumulative causation in the formation of a technological innovation system:
the case of biofuels in the Netherlands. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 76(8): 10031020.
Adrian Smith (Senior fellow)1
Environment and Energy Programme, SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research), Freeman Centre,
University of Sussex, UK
Smith, A., A. Stirling, et al. (2005). The governance of sustainable socio-technical transitions. Research Policy 34(10):
14911510.
Smith, A., J. P. Vofl, et al. (2010). Innovation studies and sustainability transitions: The allure of the multi-level
perspective and its challenges. Research Policy 39(4): 435448.
Smith, A. (2003). Transforming technological regimes for sustainable development: a role for alternative technology
niches? Science and Public Policy 30(2): 127135.
Stefan Kuhlmann (Professor in Foundations of Science)
Technology and Society at the University of Twente, The Netherlands
Kuhlmann, S. (2001). Future governance of innovation policy in Europe Three scenarios. Research Policy 30(6):
953976.
Kuhlmann, S. and J. Edler (2003). Scenarios of technology and innovation policies in Europe: Investigating future
governance. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 70(7): 619637.
1

The papers were published during his position at the Department of Technology Analysis and Innovation Strategies, Fraunhofer Institute
for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) in Germany.

Across the three other largely ecological-based

notions, eco-innovation seems to be the most precise
and well-developed concept, whereas green innovation remains rather shallow. In most of the publications, the notions are, however, used interchangeably.
We identified various scholars who contributed to
defining green innovation, such as Ren Kemp from
Maastricht University.
Further advances in this area are impeded by the
problems of measuring and comparing precisely the
environmental benefits of different innovations. This
problem recently led to several attempts to categorize
innovations, for example differentiate them by technology, degree of novelty or application area (Kemp
and Pearson, 2007). Discussing all available measurement approaches would go beyond the scope of
this paper as a widely accepted consensus has not
been found to date. An overview of different categorizations is provided by Arundel and Kemp (2009).
The results from this quantitative literature analyses
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further revealed that little research was conducted on

the topic prior to 1990.
The majority of publications in our dataset relate
to the field BAFE. Within this field, the majority of
publications focus evidently on economic topics on
meso- or macrolevel of innovation science (i.e.
industry, national policy level) instead of managerial
topics (i.e. intrafirm level). Among several journals
that publish results of green innovation research, the
Journal of Cleaner Production clearly stands out.
With a total of 135 publications, it ranks first, and
hence appears to have a central hub function for
green innovation research. Furthermore, the journal
Research Policy seems to play a central role linking
scholars in the wider BAFE field with those pursuing
innovation management research. In this particular
research stream, two further journals play important
roles (i.e. Technological Forecasting and Social
Change, Technovation). It appears that most influential publications originate from European research
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Tim Schiederig, Frank Tietze and Cornelius Herstatt

Table 6. Innovation management articles with 10 or more annual citations
Rank

Cites

Cites/year

Pub
year

First author
name

Title

Journal

488

54,2

2002

B. . Lundvall

Research Policy

213

35,5

2005

A. Smith

84

28,0

2008

J. Markard

290

24,2

1999

A. Gerybadze

58

19,3

2008

J. Horbach

64

16,0

2007

J. Edler

218

14,5

1996

J. O. Lanjouw

72

14,4

2006

S. Thornhill

14

14,0

2010

T. J. Foxon

10

125

12,5

2001

S. Kuhlmann

11

36

12,0

2008

E. A. Eriksson

12

50

10,0

2006

J. A. Siguaw

12

20

10,0

2009

A. Faber

National systems of production,

innovation and competence
building
The governance of sustainable
socio-technical transitions
Technological innovation
systems and the multi-level
perspective: towards an
integrated framework
Globalization of R&D: recent
changes in the management
of innovation in transnational
corporations
Determinants of environmental
innovation new evidence
from German panel data
sources
Public procurement and
innovation resurrecting the
demand side
Innovation and the international
diffusion of environmentally
responsive technology
Knowledge, innovation and firm
performance in high- and
low-technology regimes
Developing transition pathways
for a low carbon electricity
system in the UK
Future governance of innovation
policy in Europe three
scenarios
Adaptive foresight: navigating
the complex landscape of
policy strategies
Conceptualizing innovation
orientation: A framework for
study and integration of
innovation research
Models in evolutionary
economics and environmental
policy: towards an
evolutionary environmental
economics

centers in the Netherlands, Italy and Germany.

However, we can conclude more significantly that the
field of ecological innovation management still plays
a minor role in innovation management research,
with only 136 publications so far. From our research,
it appears that hardly any institution evolved with a
clear research focus dedicated to green innovation
management.
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Research Policy
Research Policy

Research Policy

Research Policy

Research Policy

Research Policy

Journal of Business Venturing

Technological Forecasting and

Social Change
Research Policy

Technological Forecasting and

Social Change
Journal of Product Innovation
Management

Technological Forecasting and

Social Change

6. Conclusions and future research

We found that different notions of innovations with
reduced environmental impact are used interchangeably. Our research identified relevant journals and
prominent scholars in the broader discipline of business administration, finance and economics, but more
specifically in the innovation management field. We
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Green innovation in technology and innovation management

showed that the research focus in the field of green
innovation in the past has been at an industry or
national level, which is a highly complex area associated with numerous problems (e.g. measurement of
economical benefit, comparison of alternatives, etc.).
For future research, we suggest placing more
emphasis on firm-level studies: first, to describe and
analyze relevant problems thoroughly at the microlevel; second, to compare well-described ecological
innovations from different firms and sectors so as to
contribute to theory building at a meso- or macrolevel. Furthermore, the most available definitions
in the field of green innovations include economicalAND ecological-intended innovations. We suggest
pursuing further research to create an advanced
understanding of the coexistence/interaction of the
two intentions in managerial praxis as many recent
innovations are no longer purely policy-driven.
Another problem where further research is needed is
in the classification of green innovations.

Acknowledgement
The paper was presented at the XXII ISPIM Conference, Sustainability in Innovation: Innovation Management Challenges, 1215 June 2011, Hamburg
Session 1.1: Sustainability: Broader Perspectives.

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Notes
1. This paper is based on a paper presented by the authors
at the 22nd ISPIM Conference 2011 in Hamburg, June
2011.
2. Please note that not all papers published prior to 1990
may be digitalized, and therefore can hardly be included
in the GS database.
3. Please note that Table 2 lists only the first authors.

Tim Schiederig is a PhD Student at the Institute for

Technology and Innovation Management of Prof and
Dr Herstatt at the Hamburg University of Technology. Before starting his PhD, he finished his Diploma

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in economical engineering at the Technical University of Braunschweig with a specialization on innovative energy systems. His research interests cover
ecological innovations, product service systems and
entrepreneurship. He teaches entrepreneurship at
Hamburg University of Technology and the Northern
Institute of Technology.
Frank Tietze is a Researcher at the Institute for
Technology and Innovation Management, Hamburg
University of Technology, Germany, from where he
also received his PhD. He is affiliated with the Industrial Management and Economics division at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. His research
interests cover environmental innovations, product
service systems, intellectual property strategies and
markets for technology. His works have appeared in
the International Journal for Innovation and Technology Management, Creativity and Innovation Management, and International Journal for Technology and
Intelligence Planning. He teaches technology, innovation and intellectual property management.
Cornelius Herstatt is a Professor and Director of the
Institute for Technology and Innovation Management, Hamburg University of Technology, Germany,
and Guest Professor of Tohoku University, Sendai/
Japan. He received his PhD in innovation management from the University of Zurich, Switzerland. His
research interests cover user innovation, open source
innovation or globalization of innovation. He is
research fellow/alumnus of organizations including
East-West Centre, JSPS, Sloan School of Management (MIT) and Templeton College (Oxford). His
works have appeared in Research Policy, Journal of
Product Innovation Management, R&D Management, and International Journal of Technology Management. He teaches strategy, technology and
innovation to MBA/PhD students and executives.

2012 The Authors

R&D Management 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd