The importance of green innovation management is growing in
practice and academia likewise. To our knowledge, a recent and comprehensive
literature review is lacking. In this paper we contribute to a clarification of the
concept “green innovation” and provide an overview of the existing body of
literature in the field of green innovations identifying the most active scholars,
institutions and relevant publications.
We find that the three different notions of green, eco/ecological and
environmental innovation are used largely synonymously while the notion of
sustainable innovation broadens the concept and includes a social dimension.
We find further that the most active scholars are situated in Europe (i.e.
Netherlands, Italy and Germany) and identified three innovation management
journals leading the field.