ABSTRACT

Enterprises of the agri-food and other sectors develop innovations that can serve the EU’s Green Deal objective to become climate-neutral by 2050. Innovation processes face specific innovation environment conditions, which are beyond the enterprise’s control. Our research aims to investigate how the innovation environment affects product innovation processes of agri-food enterprises located in a cross-border region. We developed our conceptual framework of the “cross-border innovation environment” based on innovation system and innovation management literature. We conducted semi-structured interviews in selected agri-food enterprises in the Dutch-German region Rhine-Waal. Results indicate that agri-food enterprises’ innovation environments concentrated on national-level factors, and that cross-border factors and relationships were rare. Moreover, different factors influenced different stages of innovation processes that were primarily driven by markets compared to research. We conclude that integrating customers and business partners during research and technological development is important to address current challenges of the Green Deal. Understanding how the innovation environment influences innovation processes in agri-food enterprises can help to develop appropriate policies.

摘要

农业食品和其他行业的企业开发的创新可以服务于欧盟绿色协议的目标，即到 2050 年实现气候中和。创新过程面临特定的创新环境条件，这超出了企业的控制范围。我们的研究旨在调查创新环境如何影响位于跨境地区的农产品企业的产品创新过程。我们基于创新系统和创新管理文献制定了“跨境创新环境”的概念框架。我们对荷兰-德国莱茵-瓦尔地区选定的农业食品企业进行了半结构化访谈。结果表明，农产品企业的创新环境集中于国家层面的因素，跨国因素和关系很少见。而且，与研究相比，不同的因素影响了主要由市场驱动的创新过程的不同阶段。我们得出结论，在研究和技术开发过程中整合客户和业务合作伙伴对于应对绿色协议当前的挑战非常重要。了解创新环境如何影响农业食品企业的创新过程有助于制定适当的政策。