Integrating Eco-Innovations and Stakeholder Engagement for Sustainable Development and a Social License to Operate Anna Katharina Provasnek, 1 * Anton Sentic 2 and Erwin Schmid 1 1 Institute for Sustainable Economic Development, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Austria 2 Department of Systems Management and Strategy, University of Greenwich, London, UK ABSTRACT Eco-innovations of corporations are seen to contribute to the mitigation of negative impacts on the natural environment. However, despite environmental gains, some eco-innovations fail in the marketplace while others succeed. We propose a framework that reflects the connection between eco-innovations and their social license to operate. Corporations can increase the market success of eco-innovations if they can gain a social license to operate based on fair and trustworthy stakeholder engagement shaped by the context of their societal environment. Eco-innovations can be transformed following management steps of an internal and external evaluation, the analysis of companies’ interactional status, and con- formation activities for the introduction of sustainability-oriented innovations. We conclude that the successful transformation of eco-innovations requires the inclusion of social factors, such as stakeholders’ multiple claims, to secure a social license to operate and thereby even reduce costs by avoiding sketchy corporate social responsibility measures. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Received 9 May 2016; revised 27 October 2016; accepted 2 November 2016 Keywords: sustainable corporate development; stakeholder engagement; innovation; social license to operate; entrepreneurship; environmental management Introduction I NNOVATIONS CONTRIBUTING TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT CAN ADDRESS MEGA-PROBLEMS SUCH AS CLIMATE CHANGE, water pollution, uncontainable landfills, or shortages of vital resources (Azmat, 2013; Voegtlin & Scherer, 2015). Sustainability-oriented innovations integrate economic, ecological, and social criteria into new products or processes to benefit companies, the natural environment, and society simultaneously (Klewitz & Hansen, 2014). Ecological innovations – often called eco-innovations – focus on the integration of efforts beneficial to the natural environmental and the economy (Baumgartner, 2013), but neglect the focus on a social dimension. *Correspondence to: Anna Katharina Provasnek, Institute for Sustainable Economic Development, University of Natural Resources and Life Sci- ences Vienna, Feistmantelstrasse 4, 1180 Vienna, Austria. E-mail: anna.provasnek@gmail.com Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management Corp. Soc. Responsib. Environ. Mgmt. 2017 Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/csr.1406