Innovating for Sustainability: Green Entrepreneurship in Personal Mobility (Routledge Studies in Innovation, Organization and Technology)

249 Pages·2008·2.04 MB·English

by  Luca Berchicci

Innovating for Sustainability
One of the challenges met by green entrepreneurs and product developers who
have tried to develop more sustainable products is that efforts to create better
products in environmental terms do not always translate into effective business
cases. The purpose of this book is to promote a better understanding of the
implications of environmental issues in new product development. Through an
empirical study in the human-powered vehicle sector, Luca Berchicci examines
how and to what extent the environmental ambition of product developers and
managers influences the way new products and services are developed. Under-
standing of this phenomenon is particularly important since managers are
encouraged and/or motivated to undertake environmental new product develop-
ment projects.
From the descriptions and analyses of the two case studies Luca Berchicci
suggests that a high level of environmental ambition increases the complexity of
the product innovation process. Moreover, a high level of environmental ambi-
tion may hamper a product innovation process because it may lead the develop-
ers away from the market that their product is to serve. Accordingly, this book
attempts to explain and predict how environmental ambition influences new
product development processes. This claim represents a theoretical contribution
to existing research in both product innovation and green product innovation.
Moreover, this volume vouchsafes an original and deep insight into the diverse
facets of greening.
This book will be of interest to students and researchers engaged with new
product innovation, entrepreneurship and sustainability.
Luca Berchicci is an assistant professor at the Centre for Entrepreneurship, at
the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.
Routledge studies in innovation, organization and technology
1 Innovation in the US Service Sector
Michael P. Gallaher, Albert N. Link and Jeffrey E. Petrusa
2 Information and Communications Technologies in Society
E-living in a digital Europe
Edited by Ben Anderson, Malcolm Brynin and Yoel Raban
3 The Innovative Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy in an age of fluidity
Alexander Styhre
4 Innovations and Institutions
An institutional perspective on the innovative efforts of banks and insurance
companies
Patrick Vermeulen and Jorg Raab
5 Knowledge and Innovation in Business and Industry
The importance of using others
Edited by Håkan Håkansson and Alexandra Waluszewski
6 Knowledge and Innovation
A comparative study of the USA, the UK and Japan
Helen Brown
7 Industrial Innovation in Japan
Edited by Takuji Hara, Norio Kambayashi and Noboru Matsushima
8 Managing and Marketing Radical Innovations
Marketing new technology
Birgitta Sandberg
9 Mobility and Technology in the Workplace
Edited by Donald Hislop
10 Energizing Management through Innovation and Entrepreneurship
European research and practice
Edited by Milé Terziovski
11 Innovating for Sustainability
Green entrepreneurship in personal mobility
Luca Berchicci
Innovating for Sustainability
Green entrepreneurship in
personal mobility
Luca Berchicci
First published 2009
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2009 Luca Berchicci
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN 0-203-88956-8 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN10: 0-415-45464-6 (hbk)
ISBN10: 0-203-88956-8 (ebk)
ISBN13: 978-0-415-45464-3 (hbk)
ISBN13: 978-0-203-88956-5 (ebk)
Contents
List of figures ix
List of tables x
List of boxes xii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 The problem definition 1
1.2 Research objective and research questions 7
2 Product innovation 12
2.1 Introduction 12
2.2 What is the essence of innovation? 12
2.3 New product development (NPD) 19
2.4 Incremental and radical product innovation processes 25
2.5 Conclusion 39
3 Organizing for innovation: how do firms innovate? 41
3.1 Introduction 41
3.2 Established organizations 42
3.3 New organizations 46
3.4 Interorganizational networks 52
3.5 How does the organizational setting influence the process of
innovation? 56
4 Environmental product innovation 60
4.1 Introduction 60
4.2 The greening of business 60
4.3 The environmental issues involved in products and services 63
viii Contents
5 Theory-based conceptual model and research
methodology 72
5.1 Introduction 72
5.2 Building blocks of the conceptual model 72
5.3 Research design 79
6 Description of the Mitka and Mango cases 88
6.1 The human-powered vehicle sector 88
6.2 The Mitka case 93
6.3 The Mango case 120
7 Analysis of the Mitka and Mango cases 140
7.1 The Mitka case 140
7.2 The Mango case 156
7.3 Cross-analysis 162
8 Discussions, conclusions and recommendations 169
8.1 Introduction 169
8.2 Main research findings 170
8.3 Scope and limitations 185
8.4 Rival explanations 186
8.5 Recommendations 187
8.6 Lesson learned 192
Appendices 198
Notes 203
References 209
Index 228
Figures
1.1 The intersection between EPD and NPD is the focus of this
research study: ENPD 3
1.2 The outline of the research 10
4.1 Levels of environmental innovation 65
5.1 The preliminary conceptual model for the influence of
environmental ambition in radical undertakings 77
5.2 Case description procedure 85
6.1 A detail of a Penny Farthing bicycle about 1870 88
6.2 Some velomobiles in the market: a) Versatile; b) Cab-Bike 91
6.3 The Mitka 94
6.4 The organizational chart for the Mitka project 112
6.5 Two-wheeled versions of the Mitka, Easy Glider 118
6.6 a) The Quest; b) the Mango 125
6.7 Velomobiel’s production output in terms of vehicles delivered 137
7.1 Speed changes during the Velomobiel and Mitka processes 165
7.2 Price changes during the Mitka and Velomobiel development
processes 165
8.1 The conceptual model revised 181
8.2 The bricolage and breakthrough approaches 195