A Measurement Scale to Evaluate Sustainable Innovation Performance in Manufacturing Organizations

Abstract

Sustainable innovation in manufacturing involves developing of new products, processes, services and technologies that enable economic development and well-being of stakeholders and institutions while respecting the worlds’ natural resources and regenerative capacity. Defining and measuring even conventional innovation in manufacturing organizations, let alone sustainable innovation, is difficult. This study will present an initial effort at developing a scale for measuring sustainable innovation. For this, first, literature is thoroughly reviewed to identify sustainable innovation measurement related studies. The measurement model is developed from literature and is based on evaluation of decision points. The measurement scale is obtained by evaluating each item for their relevance considering a number of criteria. This study presents the first known scale to measure sustainable innovation performance and can be used by manufacturing companies to evaluate sustainable product or process innovativeness.