Actor-network theory to understand, track and succeed in a sustainable innovation development process

Sustainable innovations are of growing interest to both managers and researchers. Managers want to understand how to develop these innovations. However, researchers have extensively focused on this question by analysing the determinants of sustainable innovation development. The purpose of the study is to address this issue by adopting a process view, which is an underexplored perspective in the literature of sustainable innovation. More precisely, the paper seeks to highlight the temporal and relational dimensions in a sustainable innovation development process by focusing on the following questions: How does sustainable innovation develop through interactions and transformations made by a manager and stakeholders? What are the mechanisms used by the manager to facilitate these interactions and transformations? The actor-network theory offers theoretical (socio-technical analysis) and methodological (socio-technical graph) tools to examine such questions. They are used to understand and track the relative successful development of a hybrid bike by a small and medium-sized enterprise in Canada. The findings reveal managerial mechanisms (playing the role of sustainability translator, defining multivocal obligatory passage points, casting of allies, mobilizing actors-certifiers and-influencers) related to four translation moments (problematization, interessement, enrolment and mobilization) in the sustainable innovation development that led us to consider it as a synchronous process (co-construction and parallel association). The main contributions of the study are: 1) the use of socio-technical analysis to provide an in-depth level of understanding of a sustainable innovation development within an organization; 2) the complete application of the socio-technical graph method to track a manager and stakeholders' interactions and transformations; 3) the identification of managerial practices that contribute to the success of the sustainable innovation development. The paper suggests further research on the dynamic process of different types of sustainable innovation within various organizational contexts. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.