Almost forty years after the Meadows Report and the idea of zero growth, there is no doubting the fact that our industrial development mode is bringing ecological disaster and that merciless constraints weigh henceforth on our survival. During the 20^th century, greenhouse gas emissions doubled, provoking an accelerating climatic disorder. The international convention on global warming and the Kyoto Protocol aim at reducing these emissions and at seeking climatic equity. In fact, although the poorest countries’ emissions are weak, they may still undergo quite severely the effects of warming. Because of human activities, living species disappear yearly at a rate of 1%. Preserving biodiversity, forests, water, oceans and littorals, fighting desertification and the strong dependency on fossil energies which are rapidly becoming exhausted, have become a requisite for human life: the perspective of a global ecological crisis sends each player back to confront his responsibilities. Besides, it is necessary to promote at the same time economic, social and cultural rights in compliance with the Objectives of the Millenary for Development, all by taking into account poverty and the strong economic and social inequalities becoming more and more accentuated by the present world crisis. In front of the apocalyptic images and catastrophic scenarios which flood the media, acting for sustainable development has become the inescapable watchword, and this at all levels of decision. The pressure on the most polluting nations should bring them to reduce their ecological footprint since they are responsible for the deficit produced by the world economy by mobilising more resources than the biosphere is able to regenerate.

The current limits of the economic cycle suggest thinking of the economy according to the environment surrounding it, not the opposite. It will be necessary to make a success of the revolution in thinking and of the economic connections, in order to design an environmentally-friendly economy and one determinedly turned toward sustainable development. However, the permissive conditions of the valuation of all the scientific and technical knowledge -and of all the monetary wealth- accumulated in environmental protection can bear fruit only if the economic relationships are modified. For their part, the economic relationships (and logics) change by voluntarist political intervention, reflecting, itself, the pressures of “social need”. Whether it is through mechanisms for development respecting natural resources, applications of science to production or transfers of technologies within countries …, the relationship between human activities and nature must be revised and corrected! It is a question of conceiving a “system of global governance” whose relevance would be evaluated by its capacity to modify the objective of global performance and whose efficiency would be measured by its ability to subject the economic to the environmental and social imperatives. In every case, the present crisis cannot be resolved without the intervention and the application of new roles, functions and economic principles. Do not we say that a crisis is the laboratory par excellence of technical, organizational and social innovations?

Indeed, innovation is one of the essential factors of enterprise performance as well as national economic growth. Either on the micro or the macro-economic level, the relationships between innovation and performance have been (and are still being) studied in several important works (Schumpeterian and neo-Schumpeterian analyses, endogenous growth theories, etc.). Although Schumpeter emphasized a multiplicity of innovation forms, the accent in most of these analyses is essentially upon technological innovation (based on Research and Development). Public policies to support innovation that are inspired by Schumpeterian analyses are henceforth at the root of all scientific and technological initiatives. Relatively recent preoccupations in terms of durability, whether they concern social sciences or the public debate, invite substitution for the question of growth, a question of sustainable development (considered under a tripartite dimension: economic, ecological and social); In other words, they invite the integration of durability into economic and scientific systems. In a sustainable development context, technological innovation plays an ambivalent role: it is the source of the problem (on the ecological side) and, at the same time, it represents hope for a solution. However, the change of orientation (from growth to sustainable development) invites one also to think more fundamentally about the nature of innovation.

The current economic and social crisis invites us to discuss “sustainable innovation” or “environmental innovation” as a basis for a new techno-economic (and social) paradigm founded on savings of energy and resources and on the development of renewable energies. The economic analysis of the relationship between innovation and performance should include the environmental constraint as the ultimate limit of the development of capitalism.

The purpose of this special issue of the “Journal of Innovation Economics” is to highlight the question of the relationship between “innovation, growth and sustainable development” and to conceptualize some processes like “environmental innovation” or “alternative policies”. In this endeavour the authors adopt combined approaches: history, economic thought, the international political economy, economics and spatial economics and management.

At first and in reference to the history, Lucy Badalian and Victor Krivorotov show how environmental constraint has influenced the development of the West and the East. The West, characterized by a resource- and energy-heavy mode of development, has depended on constant territorial expansion. New horizons were discovered as soon as the territory under domestication was exhausted and could not feed the demographic growth anymore. As a consequence the constantly evolving technological prowess of the West, based on its continuous need for more resources, led to its economic and political dominance. In stark contrast, the pre-eminence of social institutes on the backgrounds of labour-intensive and resource-saving economy became the trademark of the East. This mode of development showed its restrictions from the 1850s, with the start of Western dominance. Today, the limitations of the Western approach are also becoming obvious, made painfully clear by ongoing global warming and the lack of suitable territory for further expansion.

Today, the focus in not only western but also eastern countries becomes more and more orientated towards sustainability, even if discourses against sustainability are still very vivid, notably for example in the case of the United States. In his paper, James Sawyer studies this anti-sustainability discourse in the United States and tries to put forward its ideological basis, notably by analyzing the economic theoretical basis on which it is based. Then, using tools of political economy, he shows that a good strategy cannot transcend bad ideology. This paper seeks to clarify and therefore remove ideological impediments of an economic nature that limit or oppose sustainability.

Sustainability also requires an adapted governance system. In their paper, Lamia Yacoub and Dimitri Uzunidis discuss the limits of the global governance system to manage international economic and political relations efficiently. The analysis proves that the current governance system is not that organizational structure which defines and proves the theory. Multiple gaps show that it is presently in a crisis of legitimacy and that sustainable development remains a utopian objective. This provokes a pragmatic reflection on the possibilities of improving the efficiency of global governance, principally by a more concrete consideration of environmental and social problems at the expense of the profit motive. A revival of the role of the state in promoting sustainable development is unmistakably imperative.

According to Giovanni Marin and Massimiliano Mazzanti, in the present situation of the global economic organization and during the post Kyoto phase, notably in the Italian case studied here, CO₂ emissions have even increased. Shifts towards coal power and a decrease in environmental technology dynamics may be explained by the economic recession. Instead, all other emissions show 1997 as a turning point towards lower structural emissions. Counter-intuitively, but possibly due to lower marginal costs of abatement and impure public good reasoning, non GHG externalities have benefited from Kyoto more than CO₂. Trade expansion validates the pollution haven in some cases, but also shows negative signs when EU trade only is considered: this may due to technology spill-overs and a positive ‘race to the top’, not to the bottom, regarding EU trade partners (Italy and Germany as main exporters and also trade partners in the EU). Finally, R&D show weak correlation to emissions efficiency, apart from SOx trends. This may be due to some endogeneity (R&D explains value added in a co-evolutionary way) and confirms the need to increase research and strengthen efforts in producing specific data on ‘environmental innovations’.

The paper of Jerry Courvisanos makes the link between the global and the local levels. The author develops a broad macroeconomic innovation policy framework for ecologically sustainable economic development that can be applied to regional economies, from the perspective of Australia. Australia is one of the three largest per capita greenhouse-emitting nations in the world. Greenhouse is “the inconvenient truth” that now faces all regional communities, but its existing economic paradigm is clearly inappropriate for responding effectively and timely to this ecological concern. A completely different economic framework, based on economic activity that is satisfying (under conditions of ecological uncertainty) rather than optimising (under conditions of calculable risk) is required to address the ecological concerns of the future.

Small businesses are supporting local innovation networks. The paper of Davide Antonioli and Massimiliano Mazzanti aims at providing specific evidence on the quite unexplored area of SME (Small-Medium Enterprises) strategies concerning environmental and techno-organisational innovation dynamics. The objective is to analyse what innovation drivers, taking an extensive view (core innovation drivers, training, industrial relations), are spurring SME labour productivity, the principal source of firms’ competitiveness. Results show that training and organisational innovations are the main significant ‘non environmental’ drivers, operating effects through various different elements. Comprehensive innovative SME strategies thus seem to impact effectively on firms’ performances through both organisational innovation levers and new eco-innovation strategies.

This issue is enriched by two papers studying various aspects of innovation in the creation of cognitive and managerial capabilities.

On the one hand, Pierre Barbaroux argues that the concept of innovation capability has not been fully explored. In this way, he addresses the following research question: what are the nature and logics of the capabilities required to develop innovations within knowledge-intensive sectors? To study the question addressed, the author develops a single case study and analyses its major implications for innovation management. The case study focuses on the One Semi-Automated Forces (OneSAF) Objective System (OOS), a modelling and simulation technology to be used as a training and education system by the US Army and parent services. By seeking to economise on resources dedicated to training and education technology, the U.S. Department of Defence has adopted a new strategy for software development, maintenance, updating and renewing. Whether this new strategy becomes effective will depend on the ability of the participants (e.g., user communities, military services, prime contractors, universities) to hold and develop appropriate capabilities.

On the other hand and according to the fact that on the sport goods market brands continually seek new means of conquest and strategic positioning in order to be more competitive, Dieter Hillairet, Guillaume Richard and Patrick Bouchet show how the European leader of the sport goods market (Decathlon Group) set up, on the level of its R&D, a particularly powerful innovatory and innovating ideas management system which distinguishes it from other international sport brands. Through two recent examples of innovation, they show that this company has implemented a dual management in order to create new sport goods, one being part of a rational type process, and the other of a turbulent type process. These two processes cohabit harmoniously and produce goods which are commercially successful.