Internal resources and stakeholders engagement affecting environmental innovations: an exploratory research

The propensity towards the adoption of innovations has long been considered an essential condition ensuring firms competitiveness in an increasingly dynamic and turbulent globalized context. Today, however, companies must ensure that these innovations are consistent with the pursuit of a model of sustainable development that does not compromise the ability of future generations to reach at least similar levels of well-being. This need requires to implement production systems and processes that are as environmentally friendly as possible, as well as those of workers. To this aim firms have to adopt environmental innovations. Also prompted by specific regulatory interventions, this subject is attracting the attention of many scholars from various disciplines. At managerial level, part of the interest is directed towards identifying the factors that can encourage or support investments in eco-innovations. In this context, the paper proposes an empirical survey focused on a population of Italian enterprises characterized by a strong predisposition to change and innovation in general. Findings shows a marked sensitivity of these companies towards environmental innovations, while the investments actually made still seem to be overall