Managing 'green' product innovation in small firms

The growing social and regulatory concern for the environment is leading an increasing number of companies to considering 'green' issues as a major so urce of strategic change. In particular, this trend has major and complex i mplications on the technological strategy of a company and on its product i nnovations. Indeed, most authors acknowledge that eco-efficiency win be one of the major challenges for R&D practice and theory in the next decade. Un fortunately, studies usually focus on large corporations. There is a debate as to whether this factor will affect R&D practices and product innovation in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), A superficial glimpse at the probl em could lead one to think that SMEs will not be major green innovators, es pecially as far as product technologies are concerned, and that they will s imply try to comply with environmental regulations (mainly on production pr ocesses). This paper shows that 'green' product innovation may occur and may also hav e strategic implications in SMEs, Starting from the analysis of four select ed case studies and using a Precursors Events methodology, this paper illus trates why 'green' product innovation cannot be considered a marginal issue for most SMEs, even for those that are not directly affected by environmen tal regulations. Hence, the paper suggests a contingent framework to suppor t SMEs in the analysis of the drivers of 'green' product innovation and in the choice of a proper R&D strategy that explicitly accounts for the eco-ef ficiency of product technologies.