Eco-innovation is still a young area of research; however it has been an area of increasing concern for policy makers, academics and practitioners. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the existing body of literature on eco-innovations, and identify the most relevant publications in the field and the topics of interest. We have carried out a review of previous literature based on a Scopus search and selecting the discipline “Social Sciences and Humanities”. The search offers us 384 articles. From their analysis, it can be observed that there is a clear increase in the relevance of this issue within academia and several thematic trends arise in eco-innovation research, with drivers of eco-innovation being the most popular. Our main theoretical contribution is the development of a multilevel framework of eco-innovation drivers, with our literature review having a specific focus on systematizing the findings of the studies within this theme.

Literature on diversity in organisations is limited and even fewer studies investigate its impact on innovation. Therefore, the aim of this research is to study how gender diversity within R&D teams, among other factors, impacts innovation, drawing on data from an innovation survey in Spain. Our findings support the assertion that gender diversity within R&D teams generates certain dynamics that foster novel solutions leading to radical innovation. The results indicate that gender diversity is positively related to radical innovation. However it does not promote incremental innovation in the same way. The positive relation occurs under particular conditions of the task (a higher degree of novelty), as the two types of innovation might require different skills for their effective performance. These results have several implications for academics, politicians and practitioners.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields are notably important for innovation and technological development, which in turn are seen as drivers of social and economic growth. Hence, researchers and policy-makers have paid substantial attention to analyzing and promoting high-growth ventures in STEM fields. However, STEM fields are highly gender-skewed, regardless of whether the population considered is students, faculty members, graduates, top managers, or entrepreneurs. This is noticeable in the small number of women entrepreneurs with STEM backgrounds. This underrepresentation of women in innovation-driven business startups highlights existing gender biases and systemic disadvantages in social structures, making visible the double masculinity that exists at the intersection of STEM and entrepreneurship. This article addresses this issue by combining insights from research about women’s entrepreneurship and research about the gender aspects of STEM fields. We emphasize institutional, organizational, and individual factors influencing women’s entrepreneurship in STEM fields, laying the foundation for the articles included in this special issue. Finally, we discuss the way forward for research on the gender aspects of STEM entrepreneurship to help us create the knowledge needed to close this gender gap.

There is increasing social and political awareness of the importance of developing environmental responsibility at a corporate level. When focusing on issues of responsibility, large companies are frequently perceived to be more responsible for driving climate change and resource depletion. However, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) contribute significantly to the use of resources such as material and energy and produce approximately 64% of the pollution in Europe. Drawing on evidence from “The Eurobarometer 381 Survey on SMEs, Resource Efficiency and Green Markets”, we analyze the environmental responsibility of European SMEs, studying their compliance with environmental legislation and how several factors drive environmental orientation among SMEs. Our sample consists of 3647 SMEs operating in 38 countries. Only around a fifth of the firms go beyond environmental regulations, showing the highest levels of environmental responsibility. We conduct OLS regressions to analyze the factors that affect a positive environmental attitude among European SMEs (internal drivers being more significant than external ones) and then, to observe the positive effect of environmental responsibility and firm’s experience in offering green services/products on performance, although a conjoint effect was not found. Implications for practitioners, academics, and policy-makers are outlined.