INNOVATION CHAMPIONS AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS: SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW AND INTEGRATIVE MODEL

Innovation champions often play an important role in enabling sustainable development (SD). The rise of innovative ideas and technologies in the field of SD has led to major changes in the nature of adopted innovation. In turn, this calls for investigating the available knowledge on innovation champions' various roles and their influence on SD projects. This paper provides a systematic literature review on innovation champions' roles from a project-based perspective. Considering a search of 118 papers from high-quality journals, 69 peer-reviewed papers were identified as relevant and synthesised earlier knowledge on innovation champions and SD. The literature review revealed that innovation champions could have direct influence on the adoption and implementation of SD projects, which entail countless innovative products, processes, and technologies. Consequently, the findings of the research were used to develop an integrative model that associates the various roles of innovation champions to the successful implementation of SD projects.