Regional Perspectives on Eco-Innovation: Actors, Specialisations and Transition Trajectories

Tackling human-caused global warming and ecological degradation requires rapid transformative change in production and consumption patterns. In this regard, eco-innovations represent a cornerstone for reducing environmental burdens and strengthening sustainability. However, recent global efforts to scale up eco-innovations are confronted with strong spatial differences in their development and application. Against this background, the growing literature on the geography of innovation-based transformative change particularly emphasises the importance of regional specificities emanating mainly from institutions, technologies and actors. While many studies have explored eco-innovations’ enabling and constraining conditions at the regional level, scholarly debates lack insights into the extent to which eco-innovation activities in regions are carried out by incumbents or start-ups. Put differently, little is known about regional specialisations, i.e. regional comparative advantages, with regard to these two types of eco-innovation actors. This dissertation therefore sets out to gain a regionally nuanced understanding of the contribution of incumbents and start-ups to eco-innovation activities and its development over time. To ensure a broad and comparative perspective on green regional development, this research focuses on both sector-specific and general eco-innovation activities in German regions. By systematically reviewing the extensive yet fragmented body of research that revolves around the geography of eco-innovations, this dissertation first reveals complementarities that harbour promising avenues for future research. These conceptual elaborations are then followed by empirical investigations on regional eco-innovation specialisations using a novel data set on green patents and green start-ups. The findings suggest heterogeneous and persistent specialisation patterns of regions, while it is rather the exception that eco-innovation activities in regions are driven by both established actors and start-ups. In order to foster eco-innovations, a sustainability-oriented innovation policy should take greater account of the heterogeneity and path dependency of regional actor specialisations

The combination of supply and demand-side eco-innovation policies for regional sustainability transitions

We argue that the combination of place-based supply-side and demand-side innovation policies is particularly important for environmental innovations. Beyond that, we call attention to the double externality problem of environmental innovations, which requires (region-specific) policy support in the diffusion phase. Finally, we posit that the successful combination of region-specific supply and demand-side eco-innovation policies can create regional lead markets and help to leverage sustainability transitions

The geography of environmental innovation : a critical review and agenda for future research

This article provides a critical literature review on the regional determinants of environmental innovation. The analysis of the relevant literature on supply-side factors, demand-side factors, and institutional factors reveals the importance of regional determinants in green technology development. Specifically, regional R&D collaborations, university-industry collaborations, and technological relatedness have positive effects on innovation activities in green domains. On the demand side, regional environmental awareness and demonstration effects play a pivotal role in the emergence and diffusion of environmental innovations. Environmental regulations also induce environmental innovation, however, there is only limited evidence at the regional level. Our literature review has informed the development of an agenda for future research, which suggests three avenues for further investigation. Firstly, we recommend abandoning the simple green vs. non-green dichotomy and conducting more technology-sensitive studies on the determinants of environmental innovation. Secondly, we call for a more sophisticated and critical engagement with regional institutions, with a focus on both formal and informal institutions. Lastly, we propose a demand-side turn in research on the regional determinants of environmental innovation in order to better understand their diffusion across space. Overall, our findings suggest that policymakers need to adopt a more nuanced and comprehensive approach to eco-innovation policy, one that considers the spatial and multi-level governance challenges and promotes inclusive regional development