Successful eco-innovators: Exploring the association between open inbound knowledge strategies and the performance of eco-innovative firms

The main purpose of this paper is to analyse the association between open inbound knowledge strategies and the performance of eco-innovative firms in the food and beverage industry. We propose a mixed framework based on the eco-innovation literature and the open innovation approach. We consider the characteristics in a traditional sector based upon a resource-based perspective. Three types of firms are distinguished in terms of their sales growth in the Spanish food industry from the least to the most successful eco-innovators. Using multinomial logistic regression models, it is shown that the diversity of collaborators (breadth of external sources of knowledge) and joint adoption of product and process eco-innovations are positively associated with the probability of achieving high sales growth. Moreover, we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between the breadth of the external search and firm performance, but only for the group of the most successful firms. Moreover, operational flexibility, knowledge-based capabilities and company size are also positively related to the group of successful eco-innovators.