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FrancoAngeli Journals

Articles

No. 2 (2020)

Cooperatives and sustainable innovation: The new challenges set by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/cgrds2-2020oa10569
Submitted
ottobre 20, 2020
Published
2021-01-26

Abstract

This study focuses on the issue of sustainable innovation, in particular, by exploring whether cooperatives, given their peculiar nature of business and governance, are capable of stimulating and promoting innovation that embraces the three dimensions of sustainability: social, environmental and economical. To this end, a representative sample of innovative initiatives undertaken by Italian consumer cooperatives was analyzed.
Reading the initiatives with the lens of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 5Ps, it emerges not only that cooperatives are well suited to stimulating and promoting sustainable innovation, but that with the publication of the 2030 Agenda in 2015, their innovation has been strengthened especially in the social and economic fields, as well as the environmental field. Italian cooperatives, therefore, seem capable of responding to the new challenges of sustainability. The study is significant from an academic point of view and sees the union of the themes of cooperatives and sustainable innovation as an element of novelty.

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