Green Plastics: Analysis of a Firm’s Sustainability Orientation for Innovation

Abstract

This study aims to evaluate the orientation towards sustainability for a company’s innovation project, grounded in three aspects: the importance of the triple bottom line dimensions; the stakeholders’ engagement; and the nature of competencies necessary to this innovation. In order to do achieve our objective, we have gathered data from a case study of the green plastic project in Braskem, the biggest chemical company in Brazil and in America, and one of the biggest biopolymer producers worldwide. Thus, the study addresses the following propositions: P₁: Sustainability-oriented innovation must have also environmental and social criteria, besides economic criteria; P₂: Sustainability-oriented innovation has multiple stakeholders-related criteria selection, besides own company shareholders; and P₃: Sustainability-oriented innovation projects demand major presence of competencies if compared to traditional ones. The main results show the prevalence of environmental indicators over others, the very importance of the value chain and knowledge as a basis for sustainability-oriented innovation.