Corporate sustainability and innovation in SMEs: Evidence of themes and activities in practice
结合创新理论、可持续发展实践和小企业特征，分析了橡胶和塑料行业中中小企业可持续创新的主题与活动，发现多数创新是渐进式的，而将可持续性融入战略的企业能创造更多价值。
Abstract Recently, innovation processes towards sustainable development have received increasing attention in academic literature. This research introduces the combination of insights from innovation theory, sustainable development practice and small business characteristics to unlock new knowledge on factors that influence the translation of sustainable innovation within small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) into practice. The sustainability themes and activities as described for large companies (i.e. in the sustainability reporting and management literature) were used as starting point in this study. It presents empiric results of the PRIMA Project conducted within the rubber and plastics industry (RPI) on sustainable innovation activities. It will show that many sustainable innovations are directed at the improvement of technological processes (eco‐efficiency) and to lower costs of production. These innovations can be seen as incremental. Companies with sustainability integrated in their orientation and innovation processes show value creation: the development of products new to the market (radical innovations) and cooperation with stakeholders. The PRIMA project shows that more insight in SME innovative characteristics and (e)valuation of sustainable innovation efforts provides opportunities to improve the sustainability performance of SMEs. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.