Supporting sustainable innovation through stakeholder management: a systems view

Abstract

Although stakeholder-related considerations are receiving an increasing attention within development scenarios and in particular, within innovation processes, the actual management of stakeholders' identification and phase specific involvement has not been covered sufficiently, especially about sustainable innovation. A second shortcoming that can be observed is that sustainability and innovation are mainly treated as uncoupled systems, with a little effort to synthesise. This paper deals with how stakeholder-related problem-solving processes can contribute not only to the successful innovations, but also to sustainable innovations. Based on a brief discussion of the characteristics of sustainable innovation, the different types of stakeholders, their possible roles and their involvement within the problem-solving process are discussed based on a systems thinking perspective. The findings are demonstrated based on a quantitative analysis of the responses of 200 stakeholders (four different groups, each comprising 50 participants) and provide for meaningful results for stakeholder management issues.