The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual framework for multi-stakeholder innovation initiatives (MSIIs) as collaborative cross-sector alliances driving the generation and realisation of innovations for sustainability. It suggests that MSIIs may initiate innovations that lead to transformation towards more sustainable structures of society.
First, the interdependence of the non-linear, co-evolving innovation process and its surrounding innovation system is described from a micro-meso-macro perspective. This is to emphasise the importance of actors from different sectors integrating innovation initiatives for sustainability.
Second, different types and approaches of innovations for sustainability are outlined, which bear the potential to contribute to the resolution of sustainability challenges and in some cases even bear the potential to initiate societal transformation towards sustainability.
Third, initiatives aiming at generating and realising these innovations and transformations for sustainability are conceptualised as multi-stakeholder innovation initiatives and delineated from other sustainability- or innovation-oriented networks and alliances.
Fourth, the importance of stakeholder integration within MSIIs on a structural as well as on a processual level is highlighted for creating collective learning effects towards solving the sustainability meta-problem.
Finally, coordinated stakeholder integration within MSIIs as well as their coordinated exploitation of more sustainable resources are emphasised. These processes are subsumed into purposive transaction efforts ideally resulting in the generation and realisation of innovations, which may ultimately lead to societal transformation towards sustainability.