As the circular economy (CE) gains traction in literature and practice, several academic communities are opening up spaces that move away from the CE as a pure engineering concept. This systematic literature review (n = 77) analyses and discusses the fragmented body of knowledge on the meso-level of supply chains (SCs): (a) to find common ground that underpins the current implementation of the CE on this level; and (b) to identify drivers, inhibitors, and enablers from which CE SC configurations emerge. The review finds that there remain differences in CE definitions that result from claimed antecedents and scopes, resulting in distinct research streams. On the meso-level, eco-industrial parks, environmental SCs, and closed-loop SCs each face significant challenges. The latter potentially offers the largest environmental benefits but engenders radical changes for business models and exposes SCs to more risk. We firstly argue for moving away from using a prescriptive set of practices as definitions for the CE towards a set of overarching goals to allow for the inclusion of future practices and techniques. Secondly, we highlight that research going beyond the meso-level to consider the wider social and institutional environment is needed to solve current challenges.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to synthesize the extant literature on green innovation (GI), and more importantly, to provide future directions for GI research from the innovation ecosystem (IE) perspective.Design/methodology/approach: A systematic literature review is conducted to summarize the status of current GI research, followed by content analysis to identify connectivity and crossovers between key concepts in the bodies of GI and IE literature. Then, the authors propose a green innovation ecosystem (GIE) framework and offer recommendations for future research on GI.Findings: It is evident that the bodies of GI and IE literature overlap on the roles of external actors, and yet, there is scant research investigating GI activities from the IE perspective. Moreover, there are multiple directions worthy of future research applying the proposed GIE framework.Originality/value: Though the concept of ecosystem has become pervasive in innovation management research, this study is one of the first works to introduce IE concepts and propositions in the GI research context. This paper provides new knowledge on GIEs and sets the basis for further investigation.