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- Driving the electric bandwagon: the dynamics of incumbents' sustainable innovationPublication . Bohnsack, René; Kolk, Ans; Pinkse, Jonatan; Bidmon, Christina M.Given that entire industries face sustainability challenges, it is important to understand the dynamics that lead “firms-in-an-industry” to engage in sustainable product innovation. To provide more insight into the question of how innovation activities spread from individual firm action to an industry-wide engagement, this paper examines the automobile industry and the development of electric vehicles (EVs). The analysis covers automobile incumbents over a crucial decade for EV development in the industry, focusing on the different strategic motives that especially the so-called “first movers” used to justify their earlier engagement. We find that EVs became a core pillar of the incumbents' technology strategies through a combination of coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures. Yet, the strategic motives to engage in EVs stayed poles apart between different companies. The insights from our study are relevant for those interested in the diffusion of sustainable product innovation and in incumbent behaviour in sustainability transitions.
- Sustainable product innovation and changing consumer behavior: sustainability affordances as triggers of adoption and usagePublication . Pinkse, Jonatan; Bohnsack, RenéThis conceptual paper argues that for sustainable product innovation to make a contribution to addressing sustainability issues, we need to understand not only why consumers adopt sustainable products but also what makes them use these in sustainable way. To explain how specific product features can change the ways in which consumers engage with sustainable products in the adoption and usage phase, we draw on affordance theory. Affordances refer to the potential for agentic action of users in relation to a technological object. We develop a conceptual framework that explains how sustainable product innovation can lead to the design of sustainability affordances that stimulate adoption and sustainable usage. The framework shows how three forms of agency—material, firm, and user agency—interact and together influence a product's sustainability affordances that drive adoption and a change in consumer behavior. The framework explains how trade-offs between a product's environmental features and consumer expectations regarding desired functionalities and user experience can be overcome.