Eco‐Innovation Among Environmental Small and Medium Enterprises: A Complexity Theory View on a Regional Paradox
运用复杂性理论，通过135份问卷和17次深度访谈，分析了环境中小企业在气候危机期间进行生态创新的过程，发现文化、关系和时间维度的重叠影响了生态创新的开发与商业化节奏，而区域规则和传统企业竞争阻碍了其市场成功。
ABSTRACT Environmental entrepreneurship and eco‐innovation, although cornerstones in the transition to a sustainable world, form a research nexus that remains largely understudied. We draw on the theory of complexity and the notion of cultural, temporal, and relational complexities to explain the process of eco‐innovation among environmental small–medium enterprises (SMEs) during the climate crisis years. Through a sequential mixed‐methods (135 respondent surveys and 17 in‐depth personal interviews) research design, our analysis exhibits how overlapping cultural, relational, and temporal dimensions synthesize the complex process of eco‐innovation, and how changes stemming from those dimensions have a significant effect on the development and commercialization rhythms of eco‐innovations. While half of our survey's participant SMEs are exporting eco‐innovations, their market success and internationalization are hindered by regional and national rules and regulations and competition from conventional enterprises. Funding eco‐innovation (economic) leads to collaborations (relational) between SMEs and universities. Yet, significant challenges in those collaborations undermine their success.