Eco-innovation In Industry Research Articles

Drivers of eco-innovation and conventional innovation in the Canadian wine industry

The Canadian wine industry is a small but growing sector of the economy rooted in non-metropolitan areas. Dependent upon local natural resources and climatic conditions and coupled with changes in consumers’ preferences, wineries are pressured to adopt and develop more ecological practices and production processes. It has thus become increasingly important to understand the nature of the capabilities and resources wineries build upon to develop eco-innovations. Based on a survey of 151 wine firms in Canada, this study (i) explores the main drivers of eco-innovation and (ii) analyzes differences between the factors associated with eco-innovation and conventional innovation. The results of our empirical analysis show that both types of innovation are associated with internal factors. This partly reflects specificities of Canada’s wine industry, which is comprised of small firms generally proceeding by internal experimentation, and trial and error. However, eco-innovation in this industry differs from conventional innovation in that it is more closely related to external sources of information, which are generally more technical and related to the environment.

Cooperation as the Secret Ingredient in the Recipe to Foster Internal Technological Eco-Innovation in the Agri-Food Industry.

Although eco-innovation in the agri-food sector is receiving increasing amounts of attention, there is a lack of information about the specific conditions that encourage firms to develop eco-innovation strategies internally. Our empirical method relies on the data of Spanish firms operating in the agri-food sector, and uses the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). Specifically, we identify the recipes of antecedent conditions that effectively foster the internal development of technological eco-innovation, and then we analyze whether differences exist in the internal development of product and process eco-innovations. The results show that different combinations of conditions can yield internally developed eco-innovation, but all of them indicate that cooperation with stakeholders is the key to fostering technological eco-innovation in this industry. This conclusion encourages the creation of policies and incentives to promote cooperation in order to improve the sustainability of the sector.

Optimal human resource planning with P-graph for universities undergoing transition

This study deals with the problem of human resources planning due to the additional workforce requirements of research activities. In practice, planning of human resource expansion is seldom done in a systematic manner, thus leading to sub-optimal results. In this work, a P-graph model is developed as a decision support tool to aid in planning expansion of staffing levels for Higher Education Institutions. Many higher education institutions in the developing world are undergoing the transition from being teaching-intensive to becoming increasingly research-oriented. This shift is widely recognized as an important adjustment to the need for universities to play a greater role in creating knowledge capital, which is an essential component to fuel the next phase of growth of developing countries. Research universities are an essential resource for facilitating eco-innovation in industry. New targets that involve increased research output tend to put strain on institutional processes and resources that were previously configured to meet the demands of teaching-intensive organizations. The model formulation is based on an input-output framework that reflects interdependencies among different employee categories. The use of the model is illustrated with a representative case study of a typical Higher Education Institution in the Philippines.