Green innovation is a key solution to resource depletion and natural environment deterioration. It is advancing the march toward marrying business with sustainability worldwide. Embodying green elements in core innovative activities naturally becomes the critical information for the external assessments of organizations. To identify this information channel effect, the current study is intended for shedding light on the effects of financial analysts, a prominent and professional stakeholder group, on corporate green innovation. Combining the comprehensive incoPat database with the data of Chinese publicly listed manufacturing firms over the period from 2003 to 2017, the empirical results show that analyst coverage could significantly improve firms’ green innovation performance. It is also observed both institutional ownership and stock liquidity significantly enhance the positive relationship between analyst coverage and corporate green innovation. The information-based mechanisms are further identified by the split sample analysis based on the quality of financial information, when either the choice of audit company or the disclosure quality rank is applied. These findings provide beneficial supports for the idea that leaning on the monitoring from the financial analysts, managers could be encouraged to promote green investment with its long-time horizon and correct the myopia that overly focuses on short-term performance.

Facing severe environmental degradation around the world, green innovation is considered as an effective way to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. How to motivate firms to engage in green innovation is becoming increasingly important for both the practice and academics. Grounded in upper echelons theory, this study establishes a link between humble CEOs and corporate green innovation. The developed theoretical framework argues that CEO humility, an important but unexplored virtue and psychological trait, has positive effects on green innovation. Furthermore, we also propose that green business strategy mediates this relationship and the successful integration of marketing and technology could strengthen strategy implementation and make being green worthwhile. Supportive evidence is found for these ideas with empirical results based on a moderated mediation analysis of a sample of Chinese manufacturing firms. These findings extend the understanding of the importance of CEO characteristics for firm-level strategies and green achievements.

How does transport infrastructure spur innovation? This article examines the knowledge spillover effects of the construction of high-speed railways (HSR) in China. Using a database listing patent application information and Chinese city samples over the period 2005–2015, we find that the connection to HSR networks significantly increases the number of patents at the city level. Moreover, our results show that more collaborative or radical innovations and those operating in technologically complex industries benefit more from HSR. Our findings extend prior work on transport infrastructure and the literature on the geography of innovation and provide a comprehensive understanding of how various innovation outcomes benefit in different ways from reduced travel costs.

Infrastructure mega-project (IMP) innovation is a complex process characterized by highly diverse innovators, a dynamic life-cycle, and stickiness of innovation knowledge. The IMP’s innovation network can be easily broken due to the fact that the network involves many different innovators across different industries and different projects. Further reasons for the fragility of the IMP’s innovation network are the dynamics of the IMP life-cycle, the diversity of the IMP’s innovative entities, the uniqueness of each IMP, and the temporary nature of each IMP’s organizations. The innovation island formed by the breaking of an IMP’s innovation network can stifle and harm innovation performance. Drawing from the knowledge-based view as well as innovation network theory, our research identifies the heterogeneous characte- ristics of IMP innovation. We propose a framework to analyze the formation mechanism of the IMP innovation island from three dimensions—the horizontal innovation island, the vertical innovation island, and the longitudinal innovation island. We look at the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge project to elaborate the innovation island concept that negatively impacts IMP innovation. We also offer theoretical implications regarding the broader question of how IMPs can manage their innovation in practice.