Abstract
Constant learning from various trends and changes in the environment (e.g., in market, environmental, and social demands) may lead firms to use and absorb the relevant knowledge needed for their innovative activities and entrepreneurial behaviours towards gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. Growing green demands, renewable energies, and environmental technologies offer opportunities for firms to make their production processes and their products more sustainable, and the extent to which firms take advantage of these opportunities basically depends on their strategic perspective and orientation. The purpose of the present research, first, is to systematically review the flow of knowledge and detect the emerging research directions in the literature of organizational learning as well as innovation and entrepreneurship. Second, drawing on resource-based theory, this research identifies six distinct groups of firms based on different configurations of Technology Orientation (TO) with responsive and proactive Market Orientations (MO). The resulting groups are then compared in their sustainable innovation (SI) performance, through a survey-based empirical study in the context of Italian manufacturing industry. While previous research suggests that market pull or technology push affect eco-innovations, this study extends the literature by arguing that higher levels of balanced TO-MO is significantly associated with greater SI performance. Among the groups of manufacturing firms identified in the context of this research, ‘future oriented entrepreneurs’ appear to represent the strongest combination of MO (both responsive and proactive) with TO, leading them to achieve higher levels of SI performance.