Environmental innovation and cooperation: A configurational approach

Firms are increasingly pressured to introduce green innovations. The literature suggests that – given their high complexity – collaborating with external stakeholders is a key ingredient in the effective development of green innovations (GI), even more so than for ‘traditional’ types of innovation. While there is evidence that firms engage with more than one partner at once and that not all those collaborations result in higher innovation performance, nothing is known regarding the combination of collaborations that provides the highest GI performance. To address this gap, this paper uses a qualitative comparative approach (QCA) to identify these potential conjoint effects on GI propensity. By means of a csQCA analysis of Spanish firms, we find seven equifinal paths leading to high innovative performance—cooperating with universities but not with private consultants; cooperating with universities and with suppliers; and cooperating with suppliers and customers being by far the most diffused.