The role of process innovativeness in the development of environmental innovativeness capability Jorge A. Rodriguez a , Frank Wiengarten b, * a ESPAE Graduate School of Management, Avenida Vicente Rocafuerte, Guayaquil 090313, Ecuador b ESADE Business School, Av. de la Torre Blanca, 59, 08172 Sant Cugat Del Valles, Barcelona, Spain article info Article history: Received 28 April 2016 Received in revised form 2 November 2016 Accepted 6 November 2016 Available online xxx Keywords: Environmental innovativeness capability Process innovativeness capability Stakeholders R&D cooperation abstract Previous research suggests that innovation resources (i.e. internal and external Research & Development, acquisition of machinery, hardware, software, patents, and licenses) enhance environmental innovations. However, it is unknown how these resources should be deployed to develop environmental innova- tiveness capability. This research builds upon the resource management framework and proposes that environmental innovativeness capability is developed, at the firm level, through a two-sequenced bundling process. First, innovation resources are bundled into process innovativeness capability. Then, process innovativeness capability is extended to develop environmental innovativeness capability. The proposed model is tested with data collected through the 2008 Community Innovation Survey in Ger- many. The results confirm this two-sequenced bundling process. Specifically, results indicate that in- ternal, external, hybrid innovation resources, and knowledge brought through Research & Development cooperation with suppliers are bundled into process innovativeness capability. Then, process innova- tiveness capability is extended and bundled with the knowledge brought through Research & Devel- opment cooperation with public research institutions into environmental innovativeness capability. These results are important because they provide a much-needed understanding on the development of firm level capabilities to undertake environmental innovations. Finally, this paper recommends man- agers to deploy their innovation resources to build capabilities on innovating processes, which in turn is the base for developing environmental innovativeness. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Climate change has put pressure on managers to reduce their consumption of fossil-generated energy, and to eliminate waste and residuals along their production processes (Plambeck and Toktay, 2013). Consequently, firms need to adopt environmental technologies to substitute hazardous material, enhance energy ef- ficiency, reduce water consumption, and change towards renew- able sources of energy. However, firms usually lack the knowledge to cope with the ever increasing sustainability demands from multiple stakeholders (Horbach, 2008). Additionally, the required knowledge spans several domains, and is usually owned by orga- nizations outside the industry, or in fields where firms have little familiarity (Ghisetti et al., 2015). Therefore, to adopt or develop environmental technologies, firms either have to find new ways to use their existing resources, or have to bring in new resources. Environmental innovation is defined as “the production, assimi- lation or exploitation of a product, production process, service or management or business method that is novel to the firm [or organi- zation] and which results, throughout its life cycle, in a reduction of environmental risk, pollution and other negative impacts of resources use (including energy use) compared to relevant alternatives” (Kemp and Pearson, 2007, p. 10). Researchers have identified three main antecedents of environmental innovation: (1) Pressure from the government (e.g. taxes and subsidies); (2) pressure from con- sumers and industry norms; and (3) innovation resources. Inno- vation resources are classified into internal R&D, external R&D, hybrid resources (i.e. acquisition of machinery, software, patents, and licenses), and R&D cooperation with stakeholders (Cainelli et al., 2015; De Marchi, 2012; Horbach, 2008; Kesidou and Demirel, 2012). Previous research on environmental innovation has built upon the resource-based view (RBV) to argue that inno- vation resources enable environmentally innovative firms to distinguish themselves from non-environmentally innovative firms * Corresponding author. E-mail address: frank.wiengarten@esade.edu (F. Wiengarten). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Cleaner Production journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.11.033 0959-6526/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2016) 1e12 Please cite this article in press as: Rodriguez, J.A., Wiengarten, F., The role of process innovativeness in the development of environmental innovativeness capability, Journal of Cleaner Production (2016), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.11.033