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This literature review study presents and discusses the learning strategies of organizations participating in sustainable energy demonstration projects. It finds that academic, commercial, and governmental organizations build on six major learning strategies. The first learning strategy is to capture intellectual property and benefit from knowledge spillovers. The second learning strategy comprises the building of a series of prototypes that are technically and commercially fit for purpose. The third learning strategy aims at operating production plants that produce the prototypes on a large scale. The fourth learning strategy concentrates on exploiting learning curves in these production plants. The fifth learning strategy focuses on creating supply-demand networks that serve increasing markets. Finally, the sixth learning strategy is to develop governmental regulation and funding schemes that support the emergence of an industrial and societal institutional infrastructure for sustainable energy technology, based on the lessons learned from the demonstration projects. This study also finds that the six learning strategies are facilitated by four key behaviors of participants in demonstration projects, which are mutual trust-building, decision-making in favor of sustainable energy technology, learning-network building, and demonstration program development. To academics, this study provides a comprehensive insight into organizations' learning strategies in sustainable energy demonstration projects, regarding learning directions and outcomes. Its contribution to practice is that it supports academic, commercial, and governmental organizations in managing their portfolio of learning strategies in new sustainable energy demonstration projects.

This study investigates how firms invest in building and maintaining business- government (B-G) ties when they aim to innovate in regions where, due to institutional transitions, institutional contexts differ remarkably. Using data from the China Enterprise Survey of the World Bank, empirical findings suggest that the influence of B-G ties on Chinese firms' product innovation is different in distinctive institutional contexts in China. More specifically, during institutional transition, B-G ties become less efficient for facilitating product innovation when regional legal institutions and infrastructural supporting systems in a region are more stable, fair, and efficient. By contrast, during institutional transition, a positive effect of B-G ties on firm product innovation in a region becomes more significant when financial systems are relatively advanced. In addition to this, the value of B-G ties for firm product innovation appears to be more stable when business regulation develops within subnational regions.

While many food producers invest in adopting sustainable and/or environmentally friendly packaging for regular foods, such as milk or juice, it remains unclear why consumers choose to buy regular food in such packaging, especially when it is more expensive and other alternatives are available. The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic literature review of all studies on the predictors of consumer food purchasing in environmentally friendly packaging published in the period 1994-2019. The guiding research question of this study is: Which factors influence the consumers' decision to purchase food in environmentally friendly packaging? To review the extant research on the factors influencing consumers' decision to purchase food in environmentally friendly packaging, we employed a systematic literature review methodology. The review revealed that, although the extant research is growing, it is very limited in terms of the theories utilized to explain consumer purchasing behavior and in the range of the tested predictors of consumers' purchasing of foods in environmentally friendly packaging. Among the existing explanations are demographics, consumer attitudes, knowledge about the environmental effects of packaging, visual designs, functionality, cross-cultural differences, and affordability. The paper is concluded with a discussion of the implications of this systematic literature review for future research and practice. Among the leading recommendations are: (a) to go beyond Ajzen's theoretical explanations of consumer purchasing behaviors; (b) to examine a broader set of predictors; (c) to draw on more interconnected complex models that include both internal and external factors; (d) to conduct cross-cultural comparative studies; (e) to address the gap between attitudes and behaviors; and (f) to consider the role of organizations and government in the transition to more sustainable consumer purchasing behavior, rather than only searching for individual predictors of behaviors.

Over the last decade, the concept of a circular economy, an industrial economy that is restorative or regenerative by intention and design, has gained increased attention of policy makers, industry and academics. Recently the number of innovation projects, set up by local governments, communities, non-governmental organizations and businesses, to experiment with new sustainable technologies for a circular city, has increased substantially. This paper aims to explore how in this emerging field different stakeholders collaboratively create value and develop a viable sustainable business model. We do so by building on business model literature and literature on innovation networks and combining these with insights on value outcomes and learning from strategic management. For this study we take a qualitative research approach, building on four innovation projects for a circular city, characterized by collaboration of a wide variety of stakeholders, each being initiated and coordinated by a different stakeholder type. The findings show an emphasis on technical and organizational learning, influencing expected and unexpected value outcomes. The main contribution of this paper is a conceptual framework to analyse value creation and capture within the context of open partnerships through different learning types. Learning proves to be an effective mechanism in innovation networks to create and capture more economic, environmental and social value then initially aimed for.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the contingent use of rational, intuitive and political decision-making in R&D. Design/methodology/approach: This research is based on a study in an R&D department of a multinational high-tech firm in the Netherlands. The study consists of a case study design, focusing on four embedded cases, longitudinally studying each case. Findings: The literature distinguishes three dimensions of innovation decision-making processes: rational, intuitive and political. By studying these interwoven dimensions over time, this study finds that the dominant use of each of these dimensions differs across the innovation process. There is an emphasis on intuitive decision-making in an early phase, followed by more emphasis on political decision-making, and moving to more emphasis on rational decision-making in a later phase of the R&D process. Furthermore, the predominant choice in a specific innovation phase for one of the three decision-making dimensions is influenced by the decision-making dimension that is dominantly employed in the preceding phase. Research limitations/implications: This study contributes to the innovation decision-making literature by developing and applying a model that distinguishes rational, intuitive and political decision-making dimensions, the interactions among these dimensions in innovation decision-making in R&D, and the contingency of these dimensions upon the innovation phase. It calls for further research into the contingent nature of innovation decision-making processes. Practical implications: For practitioners this study has two relevant insights. First it highlights the importance and usefulness of intuitive and political decision-making in addition to the prevailing emphasis on rational decision-making. Second, practitioners may be more alert to consciously changing their dominant decision-making approach across the phases of the innovation process. Third, companies may adjust their human resource policies to this study's findings. Originality/value: The literature on rational, intuitive and political decision-making is quite extensive. However, research has hardly studied how these decision-making dimensions develop in conjunction, and over time. This paper reports on a first study to do so and finds that the dominant use of these dimensions is contingent upon the phase of the R&D process and on the decision-making dimensions used in earlier phases. The study suggests that using a contingency approach can help to further integrate the debate in research and practice.