Environment and innovation: discrepancy between theory and research practice

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the differences between what the theory shows about the importance of the environment in the innovation and what can be found in its results of empirical research. The environment, although very important, is treated as a whole, not allowing the possible environmental configurations, which have different characteristics, to be identified. The general approach to the environment on innovation, particularly in the selection of innovation indicators, causes a gap between theory and practice. Through research reports and secondary data and bibliometric analysis it is observed that the selection of innovation indicators is not aligned to the environmental context, which may cause deviations in measurement. The literature review on innovation and environment and an analysis of empirical approach studies, especially secondary and bibliometric data were explored in this study. By examining the differences between theory and practice of research, it is concluded that there are no studies relating the selection of innovation indicators for the environment and that the generic approach results have no reliability. As a contribution, it is presented a model that allows one to analyze the environment in choosing the most appropriate indicators to measure innovation in order to reduce the identified differences.