Environmental Innovations and Industrial Dynamics (In French)

Abstract

This article presents an empirical and theoretical analysis of environmental innovations in an evolutionary framework. Such an evolutionary analysis enables us to develop a dynamic analysis of environmental innovations emphasizing their multidimensional character and their evolution along technological trajectories embedded in dominant technological paradigms. In this perspective, environmental innovations appear as technological compromises which aim at combining regulatory objectives and environmental performances with productivity and competitiveness objectives of firms. The sectoral analyses presented in the first section illustrate these concepts, in particular the trajectories of clean technology and the sources of technological lock-in in the automotive industry and in green chemistry. In section 2, we focus on the role of demand and of environmental quality requirements in vertical relationships between firms. We present an evolutionary model of industrial dynamics which explicitly takes into account innovative activities of suppliers and environmental requirements of industrial clients. Simulation results underscore the determining role of demand in technological paradigm shifts, and more particularly the role of a critical mass of users characterized by high environmental requirements and high willingness to pay.environmental innovations; technological trajectories and paradigms; technological compromises; industrial dynamics and evolutionary simulation models