Fostering Innovation Performance from a Sustainable Development Perspective: Towards a Research Agenda

Abstract

The benefits of sustainability-driven innovation and their impacts on performance under the three dimensions of economic, social and environmental performance has often not been adequately captured. This paper acknowledges the gap and presents a conceptual framework that helps identify the determinants towards fostering innovation performance and explains the relationship with sustainability practices through the pursuit of the exploitation of existing competencies and exploration of new opportunities from a sustainable development perspective. Their eventual impact on innovation performance is assessed from the dynamic capabilities theory perspective. The research contributes to the field of sustainable innovation and provides a roadmap for organisations to bridge the sustainability gap. It provides a holistic framework that examines the relationships of stakeholder sustainability orientation, market orientation, exploration and exploitation regarding innovation performance and its eventual impact on sustainable development. The research helps to confirm that the pursuit of a sustainability agenda is indeed worthwhile for organisations.