Responsible Innovation Toward Sustainable Development in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: a Resource Perspective

What resources do small enterprises need to develop responsible innovations that enhance sustainable development? Does lack of resources prevent innovation toward sustainability in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) or can innovations be created with scarce resources? This study investigates environmentally and socially responsible innovations of SMEs from a resource perspective, based on empirical data from 13 Nordic SMEs. The findings indicate that SMEs can create responsible innovations with very different resource combinations. The most common resource combination comprises equity, research and development cooperation, networks, industry knowledge and reputation. Except for financial capital in the form of equity, which appears a necessary condition for responsible innovation from SMEs, resource needs vary between technological and business model innovations. Creating business model innovations appears to be possible with scarce resources, at the very least with equity and social capital. Environmental technology innovations call for more abundant resource combinations. In particular industry knowledge appears to be a key resource for such innovations. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment