Abstract
The adoption of an “open sustainability innovation” approach in business could be a strategic advantage to reach both industry objectives and sustainability goals. The food sector is facing a constant increase in competition. In order to address the high competition that involves the food industry, sustainability and innovation practices can be strategically effective, especially with an open sustainability innovation approach. In the literature, we found many examples of open innovation applications and their implications for sustainable strategy. These applications are important for reducing cost and time to market, as well as for a company’s impact on the environment and food security. In this paper, the authors show the evidence of these implications. In particular, starting from the state of the art of the food sector, we highlight the empirical results of ten case studies. By analyzing these cases, we can gain a better awareness on how and why these approaches are currently being applied by food sector companies.
Highlights
In the food sector, a larger variety of consumers’ needs and a shorter lifecycle of products tend to increase competition
The purpose of this study is to carry out a first explorative investigation to understand how companies are adopting an open sustainability innovation approach, and why it could be strategically meaningful in the business practices of a company operating in the food sector
An open sustainability innovation approach could be strategically meaningful for a company that operates in the food sector in order to achieve sustainability and business goals such as: lower cost and time to market, more sustainable environmental impact, an increase in food security, and a higher attention to social aspects of sustainability
Summary
A larger variety of consumers’ needs and a shorter lifecycle of products tend to increase competition. An advantage of this competition is its strategic encouragement of sustainability [1]. We present ten food sector company case studies that, in our view, have adopted and/or are adopting an open sustainability innovation approach in their business practices. Through analyses of these cases, better awareness of how and why this approach has been applied by food sector companies can be gained
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