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.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors influencing the adoption of environmental innovations towards a circular economy (CE) by the EU firms, with special focus on technological capabilities and external support. A multivariate probit model is specified to allow the distinction between three types of eco‐innovative practices: Reduce, Recycle, and Redesign technological processes. Using a novel taxonomy based upon the distinction between narrowing, closing, and slowing loops in the use of resources, we find that financial and technological capabilities are essential drivers for all types of CE actions in the European firms. Similar findings are found for the public funding support but only when the firms are recycling (closing resource loops) and redesigning (slowing resource loops). Knowledge from private companies (pecuniary mode) is relevant to Reduce and Recycle strategies. These two eco‐innovative practices are also shown in firms with a wide external knowledge network. Results also show that there is an inverted U‐shaped relation between the diversity of collaboration and the circular Redesign of products. The paper ends up with some implications for practitioners and policy makers.