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Our Collaborative Future: Activities and Roles of Stakeholders in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

September 2017
Business Strategy and the Environment 26(6):731-753

September 2017
26(6):731-753

DOI:10.1002/bse.1941

Authors:

Jennifer Goodman

Audencia Business School

Angelina Korsunova

University of Helsinki

Minna Halme

Aalto University Business School, Finland, Helsinki

While stakeholders have long been at the forefront of sustainable development debates, the emphases have tended to be on different stakeholder pressures, or managing stakeholder expectations about controversial issues. In this paper we bring a fresh direction to these debates and ask in what ways different stakeholders can contribute to sustainable innovation in firms. Based on 80 semi-structured interviews, we conduct a fine-grained qualitative analysis of stakeholder activities in sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) processes in thirteen different companies across Europe. Our analysis identifies eight roles that stakeholders play in SOI processes: stimulator, initiator, broker/mediator, concept refiner, legitimator, educator, context enabler and impact extender. More traditional roles such as legitimator and educator are less common in our cases. However, emerging roles like the stimulator, concept refiner, context enabler and impact extender are clearly identifiable and could be particularly valuable for SOI. We enhance a collaborative perspective of stakeholder theory finding that stakeholders can play highly collaborative and proactive roles, and argue that secondary stakeholders may actually be more relevant for SOI than primary stakeholders.

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Our Collaborative Future: Activities and Roles of

Stakeholders in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

Jennifer Goodman,*Angelina Korsunova and Minna Halme

Management Studies, Aalto University, Business School

ABSTRACT

While stakeholders have long been at the forefront of sustainable development debates, the

emphases have tended to be on different stakeholder pressures, or managing stakeholder

expectations about controversial issues. In this paper we bring a fresh direction to these de-

bates and ask in what ways different stakeholders can contribute to sustainable innovation in

ﬁrms. Based on 80 semi-structured interviews, we conduct a ﬁne-grained qualitative analysis

of stakeholder activities in sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) processes in 13 different

companies across Europe. Our analysis identiﬁes eight roles that stakeholders play in SOI

processes: stimulator, initiator, broker/mediator, concept reﬁner, legitimator, educator, con-

text enabler and impact extender. More traditional roles such as legitimator and educator are

less common in our cases. However, emerging roles such as stimulator, concept reﬁner,

context enabler and impact extender are clearly identiﬁable and could be particularly valuable

for SOI. We enhance a collaborative perspective of stakeholder theory, ﬁnding that stake-

holders can play highly collaborative and proactive roles, and argue that secondary stake-

2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Received 22 February 2016; revised 26 September 2016; accepted 4 October 2016

Keywords: stakeholder theory; innovation; sustainable development; stakeholder engagement; sustainable innovation;

collaboration

Introduction

THE QUEST FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT FOR OUR COMMON FUTURE (BRUNDTLAND ET AL., 1987) FUNDAMENTALLY

challenges many contemporary business practices. From an organizational perspective, stakeholders and

innovation are at the heart of this challenge. This is because, ﬁrst, moving toward sustainable development

calls for innovation: minor adjustments in business as usual are not sufﬁcient. Second, the content of ‘sus-

tainability’cannot be deﬁned and decided upon by company managers alone: it is a multi-dimensional concept, the

content of which needs to be continuously negotiated between the multiple stakeholders concerned (Hall and

Vredenburg, 2003). In this paper we bring these essential aspects together by focusing on collaboration between

*Correspondence to: Goodman, Jennifer, Management Studies, Aalto University, Business School

E-mail jennifer.goodman@aalto.ﬁ

Business Strategy and the Environment

Bus. Strat. Env. 2017

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/bse.1941

companies and their stakeholders in sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) processes, and asking in what ways

stakeholders can contribute to innovation aimed at creating new, more socially and/or environmentally sustainable

products or services.

Stakeholder engagement has a variety of different meanings and uses in the literature (Greenwood, 2007). A

common focus of stakeholder engagement is the differing interests between companies and a stakeholder group,

to the extent that stakeholder theory is assumed to be ‘about managing potential conﬂict stemming from divergent

interests’(Frooman, 1999: 193). Stakeholder engagement research often focuses on multi-stakeholder initiatives,

partnerships and platforms (Mena and Palazzo, 2012; Rasche, 2012; Selsky and Parker, 2005) and on processes

where stakeholders are relatively distant from the strategic core of a company (Laplume et al., 2008). Our paper goes

beyond these typical foci to the heart of product and service innovation. Traditionally seen as a company’s internal

remit, recent trends in innovation suggest that there is value in exploring wider partner networks (Baldwin and von

Hippel, 2011; Chesbrough et al., 2006; Kazadi et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2012; Schaltegger and Wagner, 2011). Under-

standing stakeholder engagement in a broad sense as the interaction with, and/or involvement of, stakeholders in a

positive way in the activities of an organization (Ayuso et al., 2011; Greenwood, 2007), we examine what deeper

forms of stakeholder engagement there are in SOI, and in what ways stakeholders can contribute to such innova-

tion. Thus, we respond to calls for research into the changing roles of different stakeholders in the transformation

to a sustainability-focused society (Hines and Marin, 2004), and for unusual and positive cases of stakeholder inclu-

sion, and opportunities for innovation through bringing together diverse stakeholders (Laplume et al., 2008).

Given that stakeholder engagement in new product development for sustainability is an understudied phenom-

enon (Driessen and Hillebrand, 2013), a qualitative approach is appropriate for exploring the different ways in which

stakeholders can contribute (Yin, 2009) to SOI. We follow a multiple case study approach and investigate 13 success-

ful SOI processes from nine European countries. The cases were identiﬁed through an extensive search for business

ﬁrms where stakeholders were actively involved in creative innovation activities (Piller et al., 2011). While this prac-

tice is still rare, collaboration with different stakeholders has been hailed as a new paradigm in innovation (Lee et al.,

2012), providing a valuable and untapped research setting particularly relevant to our common future.

While a uniﬁed deﬁnition of ‘sustainable innovation’does not yet exist (Perl-Vorbach et al., 2014), for the pur-

poses of this paper we deﬁne sustainable innovation as a new or signiﬁcantly improved product or service whose

implementation in the market solves or alleviates an environmental or a social problem (Bos-Brouwers, 2010;

Halme and Korpela, 2014). Due to the newness of many of the innovations in the cases, it was too early to assess

their actual impact on sustainable development. Thus, a key qualiﬁer for including an innovation in the sample

was that the ﬁrm had the intention of developing a product or service that contributes to environmental and/or social

sustainability. We therefore use the term ‘sustainability-oriented innovation’or SOI.

Responding to the calls for bridging stakeholder theory with other organization theories and in new empirical

contexts (Freeman et al., 2010; Laplume et al., 2008; Steurer, 2006), we bring a fresh direction to stakeholder theory

by inspecting innovation practices through a stakeholder lens and identifying different stakeholder roles. Building

on the work of Mead (1934) and Biddle (1986), we deﬁne ‘role’as a pattern of actions that becomes apparent during

the process of innovation and that is affected by both the attributes of the stakeholder (e.g. whether it is primary or

secondary to the company) and the context, which in our study is SOI. We ﬁnd that stakeholders can have a multi-

tude of roles, some of which can be highly proactive, and we provide empirical support for previous claims (Hall and

Martin, 2005; Hall and Wagner, 2012; Hart and Sharma, 2004) that secondary stakeholders are potentially more

relevant than their primary counterparts in SOI.

Next we review stakeholder theory in the context of sustainability and explore the literature on open innovation

and more speciﬁcally SOI. We then discuss our data and method, after which we present our ﬁndings and propo-

sitions. The following section discusses the implications of our research and avenues for future research.

Stakeholders And Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

Stakeholder theory represents a shift in worldview from managing the business ﬁrm for the beneﬁt of purely its

shareholders, to following a management strategy which creates value for a wider group of stakeholders (Freeman,

J. Goodman et al.

DOI: 10.1002/bse

1984; Freeman and Reed, 1983). Stakeholder theory is therefore well placed as a theoretical lens for examining SOI,

which, by its very nature, affects other stakeholders through its inherent social and environmental impact (Bos-

Brouwers, 2010; Halme and Korpela, 2014).

One of the key themes in the stakeholder engagement literature is the focus on different types of stakeholder and

their attributes (Frooman, 1999). While several classiﬁcations of stakeholder exist (Driessen and Hillebrand, 2013;

Laplume et al., 2008; Phillips, 2003), we follow the widely accepted division into primary and secondary stake-

holders, who can indirectly inﬂuence or be inﬂuenced by the ﬁrm (Clarkson, 1995; Eesley and Lenox, 2006;

Freeman, 1984; Hall and Martin, 2005). We use the term secondary stakeholders to refer to parties such as civil so-

ciety organizations (CSOs), public authorities and academic institutions. Particular attention has been given to pri-

mary stakeholders such as shareholders, employees and suppliers, while a large body of research has developed

around multi-stakeholder platforms and initiatives (Mena and Palazzo, 2012; Rasche, 2012) and cross-sector part-

nerships (Selsky and Parker, 2005) to engage secondary stakeholders. However, much of this work is outward

looking and tends to explore differing interests and how to resolve them rather than the interaction with, and in-

volvement of, stakeholders in a positive way in the core activities of organizations (Clarkson, 1995; Eesley and Lenox,

2006; Greenwood, 2007).

The innovation literature has also shown interest in a diverse range of stakeholders. Firms have been typ-

ically viewed as innovating in their laboratories and through formal, internal R&D processes. However, this

closed view of innovation has increasingly been challenged by alternative innovation paradigms such as open

innovation (Chesbrough, 2003; Gassmann et al., 2010), user innovation (von Hippel, 2009), co-creation

(Kazadi et al., 2016; Prahalad and Ramaswamy, 2004) and co-innovation (Lee et al., 2012). These new para-

digms require business ﬁrms to be more open to collaboration with both primary and secondary stakeholders,

because it is not always clear which stakeholders might possess the necessary knowledge. Primary stakeholders

have been acknowledged as potential sources of innovation, with knowledge providers ranging from suppliers

(Li and Vanhaverbeke, 2009; Schiele, 2010) to customers (Joshi and Sharma, 2004), to consultants

(Gemünden et al., 1996) and even to competitors (Lim et al., 2010). Research on innovation collaboration with

secondary stakeholders is scarce and is predominantly focused on universities and research institutes

(Cassiman et al., 2010).

Usually collaboration with stakeholders is understood as the collection of stakeholders’suggestions, which are

taken into account in decision-making (Luyet et al., 2012). By collaborative innovation we refer more speciﬁcally

to more active involvement and creative activities of stakeholders, which need to be structured and facilitated by

companies (Piller et al., 2011). We also recognize that the idea of collaboration emphasizes its evolving nature, joint

decision-making approach and sustained dialogue to advance a shared vision (Gray, 1985; Selin and Chevez, 1995).

Still, the kinds of activity and role stakeholders take in collaboration with companies in SOI remains underexplored.

We respond by asking in what ways stakeholders can contribute to innovation aimed at creating new, more socially

and/or environmentally sustainable products or services.

The open innovation literature has shown some stakeholders to take brokering and intermediating roles (How-

ells, 2006), and developed the notion of an ‘architect’or co-creator role (Agogué et al., 2013). From a network per-

spective, researchers have explored existing literature to detail the contributions of both primary and secondary

stakeholders to innovation at the commercialization stage of the innovation process (Aarikka-Stenroos et al.,

2014) or developed conﬁgurations of speciﬁc stakeholders for innovation (Gemünden et al., 1996). However, this

literature on open innovation in a collaborative context is still lacking an extensive understanding of the different

activities and roles a variety of stakeholders can play throughout the whole innovation process in multiple national

contexts.

Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

The increasingly complex environment facing business ﬁrms, such as the constraints of the critical issues of climate

change and natural resource depletion, have led ﬁrms to look towards innovation for sustainability (Dangelico, 2015;

Perl-Vorbach et al., 2014). Recent literature on sustainable development has suggested that stakeholders have a key

role to play in helping business ﬁrms address social and environmental challenges and in driving innovation to-

wards the development of sustainable products, services and business models (Ayuso et al., 2011; Lee and Kim,

Stakeholder Activities and Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

DOI: 10.1002/bse

2011; Slotegraaf, 2012). Compared with regular innovation processes, innovating for sustainable development is

usually more complex and ambiguous due to the wide range of stakeholders it has to consider, and their often con-

tradictory demands (Driessen and Hillebrand, 2013; Hall and Vredenburg, 2003). Eco-innovations often reveal tech-

nological uncertainties, and require fundamental changes to raw materials and to the whole set of services being

provided (De Marchi, 2012).

Speciﬁc studies of stakeholders in sustainability innovation are rare, although the presence of stakeholders is

noted in the sustainability innovation literature (Hall and Wagner, 2012; Schaltegger and Wagner, 2011), and the

engagement of stakeholders is claimed to improve a ﬁrm’s sustainable innovation orientation (Ayuso et al., 2011).

To our knowledge this topic has been only addressed in a few empirical studies, which involve small samples of

a single or up to four cases (Driessen and Hillebrand, 2013; Hall and Martin, 2005; Holmes and Smart, 2009;

Lee and Kim, 2011). These studies indicate that there is potential for different stakeholders to play valuable roles

in the innovation process (Driessen and Hillebrand, 2013).

We adopt a commonly used representation of the innovation process with four main stages: ideation, develop-

ment, commercialization and post-launch (Hoyer et al., 2010). Although we recognize that the innovation process

may be cyclical as well as linear (Cooper, 2008), we utilize the aforementioned stages of innovation as a background

for analysing stakeholder involvement in the SOI process.

Existing studies have made some preliminary claims suggesting that secondary stakeholders contribute to innovation

in different ways: CSOs have potential for collaborating with business ﬁrms to innovate for social good (Holmes and

Smart, 2009) or to offer complementary resources, which can accelerate innovation and add legitimacy (Yaziji,

2004). The single case study by Hall and Martin (2005) focusing on the conﬂictive role of secondary stakeholders and

their disruptive effect on a ﬁrm’s familiar innovation routines indicates that, despite the ambiguity and complexity of

dealing with secondary stakeholders, collaborating with salient secondary stakeholders leads to more radical innovations.

Data and Method

Given that previous studies have only scratched the surface of stakeholder engagement in new product development

for sustainability (Driessen and Hillebrand, 2013), a qualitative approach is ideal as it allows detailed analysis of col-

laboration between ﬁrms and their stakeholders (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000; Yin, 2009).

In order to build theory on the nascent phenomenon of stakeholder collaboration in SOI, we employ a multiple case

study design (Eisenhardt, 1989; Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007) using purposeful sampling to identify cases (Patton,

1990) where business ﬁrmshad engaged stakeholders inan innovation process aimed at a new or improved sustainable

product or service. We use collaborative innovation with end users as a proxy for openness in innovation and therefore

their inclusion was a prerequisite for case selection. Cases were required to have the intention of contributing to social

and/or environmental sustainability through four domains: energy, living, mobility and food, and to be occurring in

established business ﬁrms. Our sample primarily consists of SOI in large companies

across four regions of Europe

–Nordics and Central, Eastern and Southern Europe –to include contextual variation between countries.

An extensive desk-based search was necessary to identify the cases because the practice of engaging stakeholders

in SOI is still rare. This search included databases such as Forbes Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations and

Global 100 Most Innovative Companies, as well as examples solicited from experts in the ﬁeld such as local innova-

tion fund agencies in each country. This led to an initial sample group of 147 cases, which was then narrowed down

using the abovementioned criteria into SOI processes in 13 different ﬁrms from nine European countries (Table 1).

Data Collection

We used a variety of qualitative and quantitative sources to generate thick case descriptions and to triangulate re-

sponses. First, we developed interview protocols for companies and for stakeholders, which were developed with

Company size is deﬁned according to the European Union categorization for companies based on the number of employees (micro, <10; small,

<50; medium, <250; large, >250).

J. Goodman et al.

DOI: 10.1002/bse

Company description Sustainability innovation Involved stakeholders Process in brief

A2A (Italy, large)

energy supplier

in Northern Italy:

heat and electricity

product–service innovation

energy management

application for new-

generation integrated

home appliances

(consumption managed

via integrated Wi-Fi

connection to home

appliances)

university; home appliances

partnering company;

end users

Wanting to develop an energy management

application for integrated home appliances,

A2A contacts the technical university to

connect with the home appliances company,

which is already a close partner of the

university. The home appliances company

provides appliances for testing the new

application in local households, and runs

most of the testing with households. The

university designs written communication

with households simplifying technical

language, and develops hardware such as

a generator.

Big E* (UK, large)

energy supplier:

electricity and heat

product–service innovation municipality; university;

market research company;

technology specialists;

end users

Big E enters a partnership with the local

municipality to ensure trust from locals while

searching for households to test their newly

developed smart control system. Household

users provide feedback on the tested system

during in-home interviews and a focus group.

The Open University helps to deepen users’

understanding during testing by applying

participatory methods in discussions.

smart control system for

solar power in households

*case anonymized

at company request

BMW (Germany, large) product and hybrid innovations

(related services and products)

municipalities; end users;

universities; innovation

agency; external experts

on megacity mobility

In order to develop an electric vehicle, BMW

co-operates with an open innovation agency

to set up a co-creation lab. This lab is the

focus point of a contest set up to capture

ideas on future mobility solutions from

outside BMW. Simultaneously, ﬁeld trials

are set up in several countries to explore

customers’attitudes to such products, to

get feedback on usability and technical

issues, and in a third phase to explore

more speciﬁc cases such as long-distance

driving. These ﬁeld trials are conducted in

collaboration with municipalities, universities,

research institutes and other specialist

knowledge partners.

automobile manufacturer

the group’sﬁrst mass-

produced electric vehicle –

BMW i3

Stakeholder Activities and Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

DOI: 10.1002/bse

Company description Sustainability innovation Involved stakeholders Process in brief

EcoVeritas (Spain, medium) production innovation, potential

for business model innovation

CSOs; end users; customer

insight agency

End users challenge EcoVeritas about food

wastage. Co-creation workshops are set up

after discussions between the CEO of the

company and a foundation specialized in

educating and promoting healthy eating.

These workshops help to develop recipes

and ideas for new products made of

seasonal food that was still good to eat but

that cannot be sold. A CSO also collaborates

to integrate mentally and physically

handicapped people into the production

process. In stores, staff help to educate and

get feedback from customers about new

products.

retailer of organic food

Cuina Veritas is a project for

new products from

unattractive but high

quality fruit and vegetables

that consumers reject and

which are wasted

Fiskars (Finland, large) product innovation CSOs; end users; gardening

schools; consumer

insights agency

Fiskars R&D personnel study contemporary

gardening trends by observing users. They

come up with an idea for indoor gardening

and set out to develop a product, hiring an

agency to run user focus groups in early

and late stages of the product development.

Gardening schools help to test the

equipment and bloggers make the product

known among users.

indoor gardening device for

herbs with integrated

LED light

gardening and household

tool manufacturer

Frosta (Poland, large) product innovation universities; public health

institutions; end users;

Marine Stewardship

Council (MSC); consumer

agency

The Polish branch of Frosta hires an agency

to conduct a survey of end user expectations

concerning additive-free frozen products.

Thanks to encouraging survey results they

develop additive-free recipes for frozen ﬁsh

meals and test them during workshops with

famous chefs and food bloggers. The local

public health institution publishes a

dictionary of common food additives to

educate the public. As part of internships,

university students organize events in the

local stores with support from MSC to

communicate with end users and explain

the beneﬁts of additive-free food.

producer of frozen

ﬁsh, seafood and

frozen meals

new additive-free recipes for

frozen ﬁsh and seafood

meals

J. Goodman et al.

DOI: 10.1002/bse

Company description Sustainability innovation Involved stakeholders Process in brief

HSL (Finland, large) service innovation university; end users; local

trafﬁc agency; spin-off

company

A university professor suggests the DRT

system to HSL. Development receives

funding through a municipal innovation

competition. HSL focuses on service

development, while researchers develop the

software. HSL collects end user ideas on

how they would utilize DRT service in their

everyday lives. The university mediates end

user integration to ﬁne-tune the service.

demand-responsive mini-bus

transportation (DRT)

service, Kutsuplus,

that complements

other types of public transport

provider of public

transportation

services

IKEA (Poland, large) product innovation municipality; end users;

customer insight agency;

partnering ﬁrm

(waste sector)

Because of new legislation in Poland on

waste segregation, IKEA introduces

segregation kits for households. To better

understand the reality of typical Polish

households, IKEA practices home visits to

observe kitchens and under-sink spaces.

Customer insight agency helps to design

questions and agenda for home visits. IKEA

store customers propose to add stickers to

the kits to make sorting easier. To further

encourage waste recycling, IKEA builds a

ﬁrst recycling station in Poland near its

store in partnership with Warsaw

municipality and a recycling company, Stena.

a novel segregation kit for

household waste

separation adjusted

speciﬁcally to the

conditions of typical

Polish homes with scarce

under-sink space

retailer that designs

and sells ready-to-

assemble furniture

JCDecaux–Vélib’(France, large) product–service innovation municipality; end users;

start-up communications

company; cycling

association

JCDecaux enters into a partnership with the

City of Paris to develop a zero carbon cycle

share system for the city in return for

outdoor advertising rights. JCDecaux

builds on its experience with smaller systems

in other cities by observing the behaviour of

users. At the request of the municipality an

end user committee is set up with

volunteers who meet with JCDecaux and the

City of Paris to discuss new ideas and

service extensions and to trial new

innovations. Cycling associations are involved

by the municipality to improve the

infrastructure and facilitate cycle use. A

start-up focused on sustainability promotes

the use of Vélib’and helps to create a

sustainable community around it.

largest self-service bicycle

sharing system in the

world

outdoor advertising

and street furniture

Stakeholder Activities and Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

DOI: 10.1002/bse

Company description Sustainability innovation Involved stakeholders Process in brief

Rockwool (Denmark, large) product innovation CSO; end users; universities Together with a CSO’s innovation director the

prototype coordinator from Rockwool invents

an idea for refugee shelters made out of

stone wool. The CSO supports the innovation

process, and facilitates rapid prototyping and

testing of shelters with the guests of a local

rock music festival, organized by the CSO.

a stone wool housing shelter

for refugee camps:

protects from heat and

cold, reduces the noise

level when inside, ﬁre

resistant

manufacturer of innovative

products based on stone

wool

Skanska (Finland, large) product innovation municipality; end users;

university; customer

insight agency;

partnering ﬁrms

Skanska hires an agency to run end user online

focus groups on affordable and comfortable

housing development. IKEA helps to design

optimal standardized solutions for kitchens

and storage to ﬁt compact-sized apartments.

University (Hanken) organizes a workshop

to increase the understanding of the

innovative project among involved

stakeholders. As a result, the City of Vantaa

helps to ﬁnd ﬂat plots for construction,

which allows a reduction in building costs.

affordable and comfortable

housing for low income

families who want to own

their home. Functional

(eco-efﬁcient) layouts,

common spaces and

proximity to public

transportation

construction company,

builds residential homes

and blocks of ﬂats

Unilever (Spain, large) business model innovation CSO; municipality; end

users; recruitment

agency

Drawing on the success of Asian Unilever

micro-entrepreneurship initiatives for food

deliveries, Unilever decides to design an

innovative business model for mobile

vending of ice cream with low carbon

emission vehicles in Southern Europe to

tackle local unemployment problems.

Spanish municipalities help in negotiating

permits to deploy the initiative in their

towns. A CSO specializing in integration

of high risk exclusion groups (e.g.

immigrants) assists in identifying the

eventual participants for the initiative, who

later became the micro-entrepreneurs.

one of the world’s leading

fast-moving consumer

goods companies

reducing youth

unemployment through a

new retail business model:

the mobile vending ice

cream, using low carbon

emission vehicles and

providing micro-

entrepreneurship

opportunities to

unemployed; bulk ice

cream is sold by Unilever

J. Goodman et al.

DOI: 10.1002/bse

Company description Sustainability innovation Involved stakeholders Process in brief

Verbund (Austria, large) service and business model

innovation

end users; research

company; customer

insight agency;

partnering ﬁrms

Verbund enters into partnership with multiple

Austrian companies and institutions to

receive funding for e-mobility from the

Climate and Energy Fund. The innovation

agency collaborates with Verbund to

conduct a lead user study to beneﬁt the

development of an innovative business

model for e-vehicle services. Verbund and

the project partners implement a pilot run

to test hardware and software solutions

developed with real customers and analyse

their feedback on usability, customer offers

and use cases.

electricity company

specializing in

hydropower

a nationwide network of

charging stations for

e-vehicles, a ﬂexible

system of related services

via mobile apps; all energy

for charging is 100%

hydropower

Table 1. Case companies and sustainability innovation processes in brief

Stakeholder Activities and Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

DOI: 10.1002/bse

‘a priori’consideration of theory (Eisenhardt, 1989). Questions for ﬁrms asked for details of the typical and speciﬁc

innovation process, the barriers and facilitators arising during the SOI process, the tools used and the different

stakeholders involved. Questions for stakeholders asked for details of their collaboration in the SOI process, the

motivators and barriers, the outcomes of their collaboration and any tensions that were faced. The protocols were

used to conduct a total of 80 semi-structured interviews. Each case included interviews with one to four company

representatives knowledgeable about, and involved in, the SOI process (e.g. project manager, head of R&D depart-

ment), and with up to eight stakeholders involved in the innovation process (e.g. public authority, CSO, end user).

Interviews lasted between 15 and 120 min with an average of 60 min and were conducted face to face or by video or

phone call; they were recorded and later transcribed and translated, when necessary, to English (Table 2)

Second, we utilized desk research to gather data such as press releases, news and blogs related to the innovation.

These different data sources enabled us to triangulate the interview responses with external documents and formed

the basis of the within-case reports that we developed for each innovation (Eisenhardt, 1989).

Data Analysis

The unit of analysis for our research was the product or service innovation process. Our case reports had 30–50 pages

according to a standard reporting structure to facilitate comparability between cases (Eisenhardt, 1989). We took an

iterative approach to the data analysis, moving between theory and the case reports to identify emerging patterns in

the data. A coding process was then undertaken using NVivo 10. We began a ﬁrst order analysis (Gioia et al., 2013)

of the case reports by using an open coding technique (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) to identify all the different stake-

holders involved in the SOI process, the different activities these stakeholders undertook and the stage in the innova-

tion process where the activities occurred (ideation, product development, commercialization, post-launch). The

analysis was discussed on a regular basis between the three authors and all the authors were familiar with all the cases.

During the process of identifying the different activities, a number of more generic activity categories began to

emerge from the original codes, and the different activities were grouped under these broader activity categories.

The categories led to a second order analysis (Gioia et al., 2013) as stakeholder roles, or patterns of actions that became

apparent as the innovation process evolved, began to emerge from the data. We used a matrix analysis to compare the

emerging roles with the activity categories and found that there was a strong match between them. This enabled us to

extend the activity categories into stakeholder roles, which were discussed, deﬁned and redeﬁned by the three authors

and triangulated with the original emerging roles until they became distinct, resulting in eight different roles.

Company name Interviews with company representatives Interviews with stakeholders Total

A2A 1 5 6

Big E 4 3 7

BMW 4 3 7

EcoVeritas 3 2 5

Fiskars 2 5 7

Frosta 2 1 3

HSL 1 2 3

IKEA 4 0 4

JCDecaux–Vélib’235

Rockwool 3 8 11

Skanska 3 7 10

Unilever 2 4 6

Verbund 2 4 6

Total 33 47 80

Table 2. Interview sources

The length of the case reports varied according to the complexity of the cases.

J. Goodman et al.

DOI: 10.1002/bse

Findings

Our analysis revealed eight stakeholder roles that emerged from the generic activity categories. Table 3 summarizes

the roles, the generic activity categories that inform the roles, and the individual activities from the ﬁrst order cod-

ing. Our cases demonstrated that stakeholders may have several roles at different stages of the innovation process

and that there are roles that bridge a number of different stages. The prevalence of each of the roles among the dif-

ferent stakeholders is shown in Table 4.

The stakeholder roles that emerged from our analysis are presented in the following subsections, focusing on

ﬁrst proactive stakeholder roles, then reactive roles and ﬁnally those that could be either of the two. We then go

on to specify which stakeholders take the different roles. Proactivity here refers to the initiative of the activity coming

from the stakeholder and is exempliﬁed by the stimulator, initiator and impact extender roles. In contrast, the roles

of legitimator, educator and concept reﬁner show how stakeholders can be reactive to a request for engagement by

the ﬁrm, whereby the ﬁrm continues to be more dominant. Thus we differentiate between the proactive and reactive

nature of the different stakeholder roles. We use examples from the cases to provide illustrative descriptions in each

subsection.

Proactive Roles

Stimulator

The stimulator role refers to a stakeholder role involving a call for ideas or offer of initial funding to resolve a

social or environmental issue that sets the innovation in motion. Our ﬁndings imply an important proactive role

for public authorities in stimulating sustainability innovation in companies. This role was identiﬁed in four dif-

ferent cases, and each time was played by the public authority. The speciﬁc activities involved a government or

municipality calling for ideas or proposals and/or offering funding to support the stated project. In the case of

Vélib’, it was the project of the Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, to ‘green’the city and his call for proposals

to provide a zero carbon, cycle share project in return for the outdoor advertising contract for the capital that

stimulated Vélib’.

The Austrian government offered funding for developing electric powered mobility solutions: ‘the call for appli-

cations…which was very well funded with 12 million euros, has triggered us, and also other companies, to gain mo-

mentum to focus on the topic, simply because the situation was very attractive due to public funding’(Project

Leader, Verbund). Kutsuplus was developed by HSL as a result of winning the prize of Helsinki City’s Innovation

Fund. Finally, in the A2A Smart Domo case, Italy’s Economic Development Ministry called for research into

innovative technology solutions in the electricity sector.

Initiator

This role comprises initiating, inspiring and/or generating the idea for the innovation. A stakeholder assuming the

initiator role may also be actively involved at later stages of the innovation process. Here we stress the importance of

the stakeholder being known, rather than an anonymous suggestion, e.g. through an idea competition, because in

the cases it led to active collaboration in the ensuing innovation development. In Kutsuplus, a university professor

initiated a project around demand-responsive transport (DRT) due to his personal research interests. After the ini-

tiation, the professor, his team and the academic institution played an ongoing role in the innovation process as a

broker/mediator and concept reﬁner.

In the Rockwool case, the ideation took place during personal discussions between Rockwool’s prototype co-

ordinator and the innovation director of Orange Innovation (OI), a CSO. ‘Esben and I connected very well, we

have some crazy ideas both…. We were standing by the coffee machine and just talking, and then suddenly we

had an idea’(Prototype Coordinator, Rockwool). While drawing on Rockwool’s experience of making insulation

materials for buildings, the CSO’s experience with societal issues steered the discussion towards sustainability.

The end result was a housing shelter innovation for refugee camps aimed at resolving issues such as ﬁre-safety,

comfort and the possibility of re-using shelter parts in the (re-) construction of permanent housing in disaster

relief areas. OI went on to play further roles in the innovation process as broker/mediator, concept reﬁner

and impact extender.

Stakeholder Activities and Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

DOI: 10.1002/bse

Role Activity category Activity Stakeholder Stage

Stimulator Initial funding or

call for proposals

city put out call for

proposals

public ideation

ideas competition for

demand-responsive

transport

public ideation

project funded by Austrian

government

public ideation

provided initial call and

funding

public ideation

Initiator Inspiring and

generating ideas

informal conversation

around the coffee machine

CSO ideation

professor had the idea academic ideation

Broker/mediator Integrating other

stakeholders

initiative for implementing

lead user study

business development

enabled user integration for

product development

CSO development

facilitated participatory

data analysis

academic development

identiﬁed pool of recruits

and ran cocreation

workshops

CSO development

mediated between project

partners

academic development

organized multi-stakeholder

workshop

academic commercialization

outreach to refugee

organizations

academic development

collaboration to develop

user integration

business development

set up and mediated user

committee

public commercialization

tracking and analysis of

user experiences

business development

trained end users to

participate in testing

business development

Organizing testing,

pilots and trials

and collecting

feedback

conducted interviews with

1000 people

business ideation

planned and organized

focus group interviews

academic development

gathered consumer feedback business development

designed and implemented

ﬁeld trials

academic development

end user research through

interviews and focus

groups

business development

implemented ideas contest business development

interviews with trial

participants

business development

moderated and gathered

insights

business development

organized and carried out

consumer research

business development

J. Goodman et al.

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Role Activity category Activity Stakeholder Stage

organized workshops and

collected feedback

CSO development

launched and ran technical pilot business development

qualitative interviews carried out business development

Concept reﬁner Developing technical

aspects

architectural design business development

developed hardware solutions business development

developed smart appliances business development

developed apps end user development

developed software business development

product range development with

expertise

CSO development

contributed design expertise business development

on-going product and materials

development

academic development

produced pre-manufactured

modules

business development

researched specialized areas academic development

designed usability test academic development

on-going design improvements CSO development

Participating in testing,

pilots, trials and giving

feedback

discussion and feedback on ideas CSO development

brainstorming and future

visualization

end user development

gave feedback through blogs,

focus groups and surveys

end user development

made suggestions for product

improvement

end user development

gave feedback on challenges and

needs

end user development

discussions about ideas and

problems

CSO development

concerns, information and

satisfaction given

end user development

shared needs and expectations end user development

gave feedback and ideas end user development

shared ideas in surveys and on

the website

end user commercialization

participation in lead user study end user development

gave input in pilot study end user development

feedback posted on blogs end user development

shared experiences in workshop end user development

participated in usability test end user development

tested and shared feedback end user development

participated in trial end user development

tested and provided feedback end user development

feedback on product appearance

and motivations for purchasing

end user development

gave feedback and commented

on product

end user development

Legitimator Assuring and promoting

the brand

well known chef conducted

workshop with bloggers

celebrity development

end user commercialization

Stakeholder Activities and Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

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Role Activity category Activity Stakeholder Stage

shared knowledge on social

networks and acted as product

and service ambassadors

enhanced brand reputation CSO commercialization

partnered to gain trust CSO development

logo used on letter to gain

trust

public development

presented the initiative to the

media

academic commercialization

Educator Providing information and

communications

launched educational

consumer campaign

CSO commercialization

educational events academic commercialization

prepared and simpliﬁed

technical information

academic commercialization

prepared and published e-book

with advice on segregating

waste

business commercialization

ran the blog and attended

user committee

business commercialization

nutrition and additives

explained

academic commercialization

described food additives in a

professional way

public commercialization

Context enabler Dealing with infrastructure

and regulation

transport and infrastructure

policies

public development

assisted with building

regulations and permits

public development

set up recycling collection

point

business and public commercialization

negotiated and obtained

licenses

public development

arranged regulatory issues

and permits

public development

installed facilities and

provided infrastructure

business development

Impact extender Extending and increasing

usage and impact

community management and

animation

business post-launch

discussion to extend product

use into different sector

CSO commercialization

offered reward points for

other sustainable lifestyle

products and services

business post-launch

integrated mentally and

physically handicapped

people

business development

created platforms to have a

more transformational

approach

public ideation

used brand image, marketing

and sales channel

business commercialization

Table 3. Coding outcomes for roles, activity categories, activities, stakeholders and stages

J. Goodman et al.

DOI: 10.1002/bse

Impact extender

Stakeholders in the impact extender role promote increased use of the product or service and may work to extend

impacts to other areas of sustainable lifestyles. An example of this extension would be moving the impact from a

focus on sustainable mobility to include healthier and more sustainable eating. This role emerged across the differ-

ent stages of innovation and was the only role to be observed at all four of the stages. Our ﬁndings show that ﬁve of

the six stakeholders who took this role, whether primary or secondary, had an orientation towards social and/or en-

vironmental sustainability.

At Rockwool, OI was proactive in suggesting an extension of the shelters’social impact by using them as refugee

housing: ‘We both had an interest in developing [the product] not only for the festival, but as a bigger product’(Di-

rector of Innovation, OI). In the Unilever case, the public authority helped to move the innovation towards more

signiﬁcant social outcomes: ‘Three types of platforms were created to gather input and insights on how the program

could further develop on the employability side, to achieve greater social and sustainable impact’(Communications

and International Relations Director, Municipality). This role also clearly emerged in the case of the collaboration of

Vélib’with CitéGreen: ‘Vélib’was already very good, we just wanted to…catalyse or accelerate adoption. It’s not

thanks to CitéGreen that the service is working, it’s thanks to CitéGreen that the community has accelerated its

use’(Co-Founder, CitéGreen).

Not only did CitéGreen encourage greater usage of Vélib’, but it extended the impact from the domain of mobility

into other lifestyle areas. A reward points system enabled users to purchase other sustainable living products and

services such as organic food or cosmetics. This role also appears in the case of EcoVeritas, where the environmental

impact of reducing food wastage was extended to a social impact whereby handicapped people were integrated into

the production process.

The three roles identiﬁed above emerge at different stages of the SOI process. However, close analysis of the

cases and the stakeholders’activities in these roles revealed that the initiative of each activity came from the stake-

holder rather than as a reaction to a request from the ﬁrm. The existence of a proactive stance taken by stakeholders

is clear in all three of these roles. On the other hand, the legitimator, educator and concept reﬁner roles were fully

reactive to ﬁrm requests. The broker/mediator and context enabler roles contained some examples of stakeholder

proactivity and are discussed in more detail in the next sections. However, most of the activities within the two latter

roles were reactive. This leads us to our ﬁrst proposition.

Proposition 1. In SOI, stakeholder roles can range from reactive to highly proactive. Stimulator, initiator and impact

extender are intrinsically proactive roles.

Furthermore, within the three proactive roles, our analysis revealed an impact extender role for stakeholders with

the attribute of having a sustainability focus. This was clearly evident in the extension of impact into other areas of

sustainable lifestyles described above. The role is found across ﬁve different cases, and is the only role to appear at

all four stages of the innovation process.

Proposition 2. The impact extender role is pertinent to SOI. This role is assumed by sustainability-focused stakeholders

that seek to widen the social or environmental beneﬁts of the innovation.

CSO Academic institution Public authority End users Business Celebrity Total Cases

Stimulator 0 0 4 0 0 0 4 4/13

Initiator 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 2/13

Broker/mediator 3 6 1 0 13 0 23 13/13

Concept reﬁner 4 3 0 19 6 0 32 13/13

Legitimator 2 1 1 1 0 1 6 4/13

Educator 1 3 1 0 2 0 7 4/13

Context enabler 0 0 5 0 2 0 7 5/13

Impact extender 1 0 1 0 4 0 6 5/13

Table 4. Prevalence of roles among different stakeholder groups

Stakeholder Activities and Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

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Reactive Roles

Concept reﬁner

Stakeholders in the concept reﬁner role give feedback and technical expertise to make the product/service more at-

tractive to a wider range of end users. In contrast to the literature suggesting a highly collaborative role for end users

in innovation (Baldwin and von Hippel, 2011; von Hippel, 2009), we found a more limited role, where end user

stakeholders were mainly involved in ‘participating in testing and giving feedback’. Both secondary and other pri-

mary stakeholders frequently undertook activities related to ‘developing technical aspects’.

End users primarily offered incremental feedback. They lacked expert knowledge to be at the front end of more

novel innovation. Instead, their inputs were relevant for making the ﬁnal product more acceptable to other end

users. ‘We would show the ﬂoor plans…and people would suggest that “OK, well the entrance was good but there

were too many doors and [the] walk-in closet shouldn’t be there, it should be next to the bedroom”’ (Market and Con-

sumer Analyst, Skanska). Lack of expert knowledge was one of the main challenges to integrating end users in the

SOI processes reported in the cases. Expertise such as the CSO’s in-depth knowledge about nutrition innovation in

the case of EcoVeritas, or the partnership with Green Wave Reality to develop smart home technologies in the case

of the Big E, were essential to the development of the innovations.

While incremental, the inputs of end users could still be crucial for the success of the innovation in the market.

This applies to providing early feedback on innovation concepts, as well as engaging end users at the commercial-

ization stage for shaping marketing communication. In the case of developing the DRT service Kutsuplus, HSL

reached out for end user ideas on how they would utilize such a mobility service for their everyday life activities.

The initiative resulted in almost 1000 responses with creative and relevant ideas that were later employed in mar-

keting. Our data suggest that getting end users involved during the SOI process helps to avoid some of the earlier

pitfalls of ‘green’products by widening the range of potential clientele (Peattie and Crane, 2005).

Legitimator

Stakeholders in the legitimator role provide assistance in building credibility and trust in the innovating ﬁrm and

the innovation. The cases identiﬁed a need for building up credibility and trust either in the ﬁrm’s actions and

the genuineness of the SOI, or in the end product/service itself. The legitimator was evident in four of the analysed

cases, with six instances coded. Apart from one, the activities coded were by secondary stakeholders.

Our data show how partnering with secondary stakeholders (e.g. public authorities and universities) can help to

legitimize a ﬁrm’s use of end user inputs for new product development. In the case of the smart control system de-

velopment for solar power, the Big E quickly realized the need for long term testing with households. However, they

had serious concerns around possible scepticism when reaching out to involve the community. ‘We were very con-

cerned, because people don’t trust the Big E, that they would think it was some kind of scam or an attempt to trick

customers. So we partnered with the local council, the municipality, and also with a local charity, who were energy

efﬁciency focused’(Senior Project Manager, the Big E). Partnering with the local authority in the UK early on and

involving them in initial communication provided the Big E with the necessary trust among households, and formed

the basis for more insightful cooperation in the SOI process. The Frosta case also demonstrates how partnering

with academics, a student association and a celebrity chef helped to legitimize the product among end users and

the media. The legitimator role of secondary stakeholders has been previously explored in the literature

(e.g. Yaziji, 2004), but more from the perspective of potential conﬂict resolution, in the spirit of ‘heading off trouble’.

Educator

Stakeholders fulﬁlling the educator role educate and prepare the public on social and environmental issues

pertaining to the innovation and a wider shift to sustainable lifestyles. For wider society, these sustainable lifestyle

issues might not yet represent the norm. This role emerged in four of our cases, in each case at the commerciali-

zation stage. Our data shows that this role was mainly played by secondary stakeholders, including CSOs, academic

institutions and public authorities.

The need to educate and re-orient public perceptions about certain sensitive issues is pertinent to SOI. Frosta re-

lied on the specialized knowledge of the university students’‘institute of abused chemistry’to communicate with

Polish supermarket customers about the beneﬁts of additive-free food meals. ‘The students helped us very much,

working, serving [at] the stand…they were very knowledgeable, so they were [a] signiﬁcant support too…they were

J. Goodman et al.

DOI: 10.1002/bse

the frontier while meeting the consumers’(Marketing Manager, Frosta). The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)

also took part in launching an educational consumer campaign to raise awareness of the MSC ecolabel. The local

hygiene institute, part of the public authority, developed and published a ‘dictionary’of food additives.

Another case that included an educator role was A2A, where the professors from the academic institution helped

to coordinate the extensive innovation project, and prepared simple and understandable guidelines for the partici-

pating households. IKEA collaborated with a popular housing magazine to develop an e-book providing expert infor-

mation on recycling and sorting waste. Finally, the Vélib’blog was set up at the request of the public authority to

provide information and insights into the cycle share service.

Mixed Roles

Broker/mediator

A stakeholder fulﬁls a broker/mediator role when enabling and facilitating meaningful collaboration between the

ﬁrm and other groups of stakeholders (as well as between different stakeholders), and through organizing testing

and feedback, which are needed to further the innovation. This role was developed from two larger activity catego-

ries: ‘integrating other stakeholders’, and ‘organizing testing and collecting feedback’. The role refers to bridging the

gap between different stakeholders and was present in all cases, with a total of 23 occurrences across the 13 cases.

There was a visibly strong role for secondary stakeholders such as academic institutions or CSOs here: out of the

13 companies from our data set, nine relied on secondary stakeholders for brokering/mediation.

Two-thirds of the activities categorized as ‘integrating other stakeholders’were undertaken by secondary stake-

holders. In these cases, CSOs and universities often had greater experience, networks, knowledge and skills to work

with different groups of citizens in a meaningful way, extracting the insights and organizing them into structured

ﬁndings, than ﬁrms did. In the case of Rockwool, the partnering CSO provided the company with access to festival

grounds for carrying out shelter testing with festival guests. They also led the outreach to refugee organizations in

order to further develop the product. In this instance, OI’s experience enabled it to be proactive as a broker/mediator

rather than the often reactive broker/mediator role in other cases. In the Vélib’case, the public authority insisted on

having a biannually selected user committee, which brought together members of the public, the ﬁrm and the mu-

nicipality, for continuous product and service development and idea testing: ‘there’s no direct relation between

JCDecaux and the user committee, there’s really the town hall in the middle’(End User, Vélib’). Stakeholders also

possessed valuable contacts for potential innovation partners. Unilever cooperated with a CSO specializing in unem-

ployed youths in order to identify participants who would be interested in becoming ice-cream entrepreneur-

distributers using zero emission vehicles.

While integrating other stakeholders could be conducted on either a reactive or a proactive basis, i.e. from a re-

quest by the innovative ﬁrm or at the suggestion of the stakeholder, the other activity category, ‘organizing testing

and collecting feedback’, comprised activities requested by the ﬁrm. Thus this role can take both proactive and re-

active forms. The collaborating stakeholders were often consultancies specialized in consumer research or open in-

novation methods. Secondary stakeholders, both academic and CSOs, also took on this role. In the HSL and BMW

cases, the universities designed the method of user integration and implemented it.

Context enabler

Stakeholders in the context enabler role help in reformulating or changing infrastructure policies and the regulatory

context (e.g. permits and licenses) so as to enable the innovation’s development and its entrance into the market.

Similarly to the stimulator role, the context enabler role is played almost entirely by public authorities. The activities

included in this role are fundamental to the development or commercialization of the new product or service. The

role was reactive to ﬁrm requests in the cases of BMW, Skanska and Unilever, as well as proactive as described be-

low. The context enabler role was present in ﬁve of the 13 cases in the study.

In the case of Vélib’, the proactive role taken by the City of Paris in modifying and developing the transport and

infrastructure policies was essential. For example, the mayor’s mobility plan provided the impetus for doubling the

length of the cycle paths in Paris and reducing the number of private parking places to create Vélib’stations.

Unilever and Skanska also required operating licenses and permits for buildings.

Stakeholder Activities and Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

DOI: 10.1002/bse

The public authority proactively partnered with a private recycling company to set up an eco-station at IKEA, the

ﬁrst recycling point in Warsaw to collect different kinds of material and waste. This created a context in which the

segregation of waste became highly visible to potential customers and enabled them to connect the new product de-

velopment with the new recycling services.

Roles and Stakeholder Types

The roles identiﬁed in the cases are unusual to the extent that they demonstrate a highly relevant and pronounced

role for secondary stakeholders throughout the SOI process. Table 5 shows the prevalence of collaboration with each

stakeholder type at each stage of the innovation process.

Proposition 3. Secondary stakeholders are often more prevalent throughout SOI than their primary counterparts.

In addition to secondary stakeholders being highly relevant to SOI, the data showed that some of these secondary

stakeholders held several different roles within one SOI process. In four of the cases a single secondary stakeholder

played three or more different roles at different stages of the SOI process, indicating an ongoing and deep form of

collaboration.

Proposition 3a. A single secondary stakeholder can take three or more different roles in one SOI process, indicating a

deep form of collaboration.

Our ﬁndings also highlight that particular stages of the SOI process are dominated by secondary stakeholders.

Table 5 shows that seven of the eight stakeholders collaborating at the ideation stage were CSOs, academic institu-

tions or public authorities.

Proposition 3b. Collaboration at the ideation stage is dominated by secondary stakeholders.

Secondary stakeholders are also highly prevalent in particular roles in the SOI process. In the four different cases

where the stimulator role appeared, it was taken each time by the public authority (see Table 4). The context enabler

role was also taken on ﬁve occasions by the public authorities and just twice by business partners, with no other

stakeholders taking this role.

Proposition 3c. The stimulator and context enabler roles are primarily taken by public authority stakeholders.

While businesses representing primary stakeholders are prevalent in the broker/mediator role, further explora-

tion of our ﬁndings, shown in Table 4, reveals a difference in the types of stakeholder involved in the two activity

categories that make up the broker/mediator role.

Stakeholder Ideation Product development Commercialization Post-launch Total

CSO 1 8 3 0 12

Academic institution 1 8 5 0 14

Public authority 5 5 3 0 13

End users 0 18 2 0 20*

Business 1 20 4 2 27

Celebrity 0 1 0 0 1

Total 8 60 17 2 87

Table 5. Prevalence of collaboration of stakeholder type at each stage of the innovation process across 13 cases

Stages from Hoyer et al. (2010).

*This number is predictably high, as the participation of end users in the SOI process was used as a proxy for the collaborative

approach in innovation.

J. Goodman et al.

DOI: 10.1002/bse

Proposition 3d. In the role of broker/mediator, CSOs and academic institutions are prominent in integrating other

stakeholders, while specialized ﬁrms are frequently used to gather and process customer feedback through testing, pi-

lots and trials.

Our ﬁndings and propositions provide detailed insights into the ways in which stakeholders can contribute to in-

novation aimed at creating new, more socially and/or environmentally sustainable products and services. It is evi-

dent from the analysis that there are a variety of speciﬁc activities and roles played by different stakeholders

during the SOI process. These ﬁndings have a number of theoretical and practical implications, which will be

discussed in the following sections.

Discussion

The quest for sustainable development calls for innovating new solutions, which often require knowledge and con-

tacts beyond the boundaries of one organization. Business ﬁrms may be able to innovate sustainability-oriented

products and services not by themselves but rather in collaboration with stakeholders.

Our ﬁndings highlight that collaborative innovation is actually a multi-stakeholder engagement effort, and we

therefore extend previous literature, which mostly addresses collaborative innovation in connection to speciﬁc

groups such as business partners, particularly suppliers (Song and Thieme, 2009), company–end user interactions

(Mahr et al., 2014; Ramaswamy and Gouillart, 2010; von Hippel, 2009) and internal employees’roles in innovation

(Ramaswamy, 2009). The results of our analysis imply that a broader approach is needed to better understand SOI.

In response to the lack of systematic knowledge about stakeholder collaboration in SOI (Driessen and Hillebrand,

2013), this paper provides a ﬁne-grained qualitative analysis, and identiﬁes eight stakeholder roles in SOI processes:

stimulator, initiator, broker/mediator, concept reﬁner, legitimator, educator, context enabler and impact extender.

We contribute to the stakeholder theory and sustainable innovation literature by specifying an extensive list of roles.

We go beyond the existing innovation literature to document new roles of stimulator, concept reﬁner, context en-

abler and impact extender. We also provide empirical support for previously identiﬁed roles of legitimator, educator,

initiator and broker/mediator (Aarikka-Stenroos et al., 2014; Agogué et al., 2013; Howells, 2006; Yaziji, 2004).

Proactive Stakeholder Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

Not only do our ﬁndings corroborate recent research suggesting that multiple stakeholders are involved in co-

creation for innovation (Kazadi et al., 2016; Ramaswamy and Gouillart, 2010), but we go further to show how col-

laborative innovation can include a range of more, and less, proactive stakeholder roles. The stimulator, initiator

and impact extender roles, two of which are newly identiﬁed in this paper, demonstrate how stakeholders can have

a highly proactive role in collaboration. Rather than reacting to the requests of a ﬁrm in the innovation process, such

proactive stakeholders take the initiative themselves to contribute to the SOI process. A new collaborative innovation

paradigm could increasingly require such proactive stakeholder roles, as suggested by Lee et al. (2012). For compa-

nies, this implies the development of new capabilities in order to capture value and achieve a competitive advantage

(Ayuso et al., 2011; Driessen and Hillebrand, 2013).

Our ﬁndings are highly relevant for understanding different patterns of activities that become apparent during

the innovation process in the sustainability context. In response to the fundamental question raised by both De

Marchi (2012) and Slotegraaf (2012) of whether there are differences between sustainability innovations and other

innovations, we claim that there is a key impact extender role, which can be played by stakeholders with a sustain-

ability focus. More traditional roles of legitimator and educator are present in less than a third of the cases. These

ﬁndings suggest a step away from traditional stakeholder engagement in SOI towards a more proactive approach,

with a shared sustainability agenda offering new opportunities for co-creating value in a sustainability context.

We posit that the impact extender role could be strongly related to innovation in a sustainability context, whereby

all parties involved have an opportunity to advance a shared sustainability agenda. This moves beyond a simple

Stakeholder Activities and Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

DOI: 10.1002/bse

transaction relationship and could provide a more holistic sustainability approach, integrating social and environ-

mental impacts across different domains.

Secondary Stakeholders in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

Our analysis of the three proactive roles reveals that the stimulator and initiator are dominated by secondary stake-

holders, while the impact extender is a mix of primary and secondary stakeholders with a strong focus on sustain-

ability. Secondary stakeholders can also be found to be proactive on some occasions in the roles of broker/mediator

(CSOs and academic institutions) and context enabler (public authorities). These ﬁndings are novel given that pre-

vious research indicates that such proactivity can exist in one primary stakeholder group: customers (Howells,

2006). We also ﬁnd secondary stakeholders in more traditional roles as legitimator and educator, and in a number

of cases they were also found to play a deeply collaborative role, with a single stakeholder having three or more dif-

ferent roles in one SOI process.

Our empirical analysis therefore suggests that the groups of people found on the periphery of a ﬁrm’s stake-

holder network (e.g. academic institutions, CSOs and public authorities) may actually be more relevant for SOI than

their primary counterparts, providing much-needed empirical support for similar arguments developed conceptu-

ally (Hall and Martin, 2005; Hart and Sharma, 2004).

Primary stakeholders, such as suppliers, were limited to brokering and concept reﬁner roles, particularly provid-

ing research, technical services or products, while the ideation stage was dominated by secondary stakeholders. This

is a surprising ﬁnding considering the extensive research that explores collaboration with primary stakeholders in

the innovation literature (Gassmann et al., 2010; Hall and Martin, 2005; Kazadi et al., 2016). One reason for this

may be our use of end user collaboration in the SOI process as a case selection criterion, which could lead to a focus

on market-facing, downstream innovations. Supplier innovations naturally tend to occur further upstream in the

supply chain. However, perhaps more importantly, the sustainability focus of the studied innovations may explain

this ﬁnding. The primary stakeholders along the supply chain have a stake in the current business model and con-

sequently little interest in innovation that may require major changes in their own operations as well. If sustainabil-

ity innovation disrupts the current business, which is relatively likely for a number of such innovations (Hart, 2005),

it negatively affects the current supply chain stakeholders. In contrast, stakeholders with divergent thinking may ex-

pand the ﬁrm’s boundaries (Gemünden et al., 1996; Hall and Vredenburg, 2003; Hart and Sharma, 2004), partic-

ularly on sustainability issues (Driessen and Hillebrand, 2013). We posit that secondary stakeholders with innate

concern for citizen wellbeing or environmental sustainability can help the ﬁrm to go beyond business as usual.

Enhancing a Collaborative Perspective of Stakeholder Theory

Our empirical evidence illustrates a deep, highly collaborative form of stakeholder engagement. This challenges the

common focus of stakeholder engagement as a means to address and resolve conﬂict and divergent interests

(Frooman, 1999; Sharma and Henriques, 2005). In contrast to claims made previously that conﬂict is an ‘unstated

premise’of stakeholder theory (Frooman, 1999, p. 193), we demonstrate that there is a need for a stakeholder theory

even when the ﬁrm and its stakeholders are largely in agreement. This extends to secondary stakeholders, who are

often conceptualized as participating in disruptive activities to achieve changes in the innovation value chain (Hall

and Martin, 2005; Hart and Sharma, 2004). Our ﬁndings suggest that the greater inclusion of disparate stake-

holders, and a recognition of the proactive nature of the roles they can take, is an opportunity for innovation, and

a potentially untapped source of value. This is in line with calls for further research into the development of theory

on stakeholder management (Laplume et al., 2008) and initiates a promising new area for future research, which

emphasizes a collaborative approach to stakeholder relationships.

Implications and Future Research

The identiﬁcation of different stakeholder roles and differing degrees of proactivity of stakeholders has implications

for the future study of engagement and collaboration. A corporate-centric conceptualization of ﬁrm–stakeholder re-

lations ‘has become the convention from which stakeholder theory has developed’(Frooman, 1999, p. 191; Kazadi

J. Goodman et al.

DOI: 10.1002/bse

et al., 2016). While we do not consider here a structural network approach to stakeholder engagement in SOI, such a

perspective (Aarikka-Stenroos et al., 2014; Gemünden et al., 1996) could be a valuable complement in order to map

the conﬁgurations of ﬁrm–stakeholder collaboration in SOI. Relatedly, organizations will need to develop the capa-

bilities to capture competitive advantage from such collaborations, and further research into learning processes and

the capabilities needed by companies to achieve such advantage is needed.

Our cases enabled an extensive exploration of the collaborative aspects of SOI processes, and demonstrate that in

SOI stakeholders can have a multitude of collaborative roles. However, we do not claim that all SOI processes are

conﬂict free. The fact that conﬂict was not reported by the interviewees may be in part inﬂuenced by the successful

nature of the SOI processes in our study. While the roles identiﬁed here provide a valuable contribution, further op-

portunities for research lie in exploring a comparative dataset of innovations that were less successful, to identify

additional roles that may emerge in such cases.

The ﬁndings show that some roles easily ﬁt with certain stages of the SOI process, such as the stimulator or in-

novation initiator at the ideation stage, the concept reﬁner at the development stage or the educator at the commer-

cialization stage. However, the data also demonstrate that stakeholders may have several roles at the same or at

different stages within an innovation process. In many cases the collaboration with stakeholders evolved throughout

the process and opportunities were identiﬁed for continuing collaboration with the same stakeholder in a different

role. While we have used the stage model of Hoyer et al. (2010) to structure our research, an in-depth analysis of

innovation at different stages is beyond the scope of our study. Further research and ﬁne-grained analysis on differ-

ent innovation stages (see Aarikka-Stenroos et al., 2014, as an example) is needed as well as an exploration of tem-

porality and dynamism between the stages. More systematic research is required to address questions such as at

what stage of the innovation process collaboration is most effective and with which parties, and how to ﬁnd and se-

lect these parties (Huizingh, 2011).

Finally, this research implies that there is a sustainability agenda that is shared by a variety of different stake-

holders, including the ﬁrm, which appears to drive SOI. Future research opportunities lie in comparing SOI pro-

cesses with non-SOI, as well as exploring the newly identiﬁed impact extender role on a larger scale and in

relation to the sustainability context.

Conclusions

30 years ago Our Common Future (Brundtland et al., 1987) asserted that attaining a sustainable future would require

a collaborative future. Sustainable development calls for extensive collaboration between different stakeholders.

Through the comprehensive analysis of the activities and roles of stakeholders in SOI, this article provides detailed

insights into the deeply collaborative nature of the innovation process, which is at the strategic core of ﬁrms, and has

traditionally been protected from outsiders.

The ﬁndings of this investigation imply that a broader approach to studying collaborative innovation, which in-

cludes a wide range of stakeholders, is needed. In particular, secondary stakeholders appear to play a vital role in

SOI processes of ﬁrms. The speciﬁcation of a range of different roles played by both primary and secondary stake-

holders provides a valuable point of reference for future work on both innovation and stakeholder theory.

The identiﬁcation of stakeholder roles of a more proactive nature contrasts with more modest roles to offer a

more nuanced understanding of stakeholder collaboration in SOI. Such roles align with the documented emergence

of new open innovation paradigms and challenge ﬁrm-centric assumptions in ﬁrm–stakeholder relationships.

Acknowledgements

This research is part of a European research project “Sustainable Lifestyles 2.0: End User Integration, Innovation and Entrepre-

neurship (EU-InnovatE)”. It has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research,

technological development, and demonstration under grant agreement number 61319.

The authors would like to acknowledge that the ﬁrst two authors contributed equally to the development of this paper.

Stakeholder Activities and Roles in Sustainability-Oriented Innovation

DOI: 10.1002/bse

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