Portraying the Eco-innovative Landscape in Brazil: Determinants, Processes, and Results

Abstract

Eco-innovations are a crucial tool for firms to redefine the environmental impacts of their productive activities toward a new paradigm of sustainable development. Even though this is an important subject, still little is known about how eco-innovations take place in firms, especially in emerging economies like Brazil. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the landscape of eco-innovations in Brazilian firms, concerning the characteristics of eco-innovators, as well as the determinants, results, types of innovation, and the existence of cooperative arrangements for the development of eco-innovations. To do so it presents the results of an unprecedented survey on eco-innovative activities in Brazilian firms carried out in 2012. The methodology is quantitative, descriptive, and explanatory, using precise measurement to provide a representative picture of eco-innovations in Brazil. The results show that firms are mostly driven by the opportunity to create new businesses with their eco-innovations. Moreover, it reveals that most eco-innovative firms in our sample conduct systematic, in-house R&D activities; most eco-innovative firms participate in cooperative arrangements for innovation especially with universities and research institutes; and most eco-innovations are organizational, with incremental impacts.