Greentech Innovation and Diffusion

The world is going green. As it does so, researchers are increasingly trying to improve our understanding of how environmental innovation can be generated and spread across markets. Most previous studies, however, have focused on technology and not on the actual instrument of change: the greentech firm. Philipp Hoff, author of the present study, attempts to correct this imbalance by providing insights into the emerging German greentech industry. He develops and tests an integrated, interdisciplinary theoretical framework for assessing the relationships between innovation, growth and financing from a firm-level perspective, overcoming objections put forth by contemporary business research in the fields referred to.

Auteur
Philipp Hoff obtained his doctorate with Prof. Dr. Thomas Berndt at University of St. Gallen.

Résumé
The world is going green. Sustainable technologies, such as renewable energy and electric vehicles, are increasingly becoming part of our daily life. This dissertation fills the ensuing gap by providing an insight into the emerging German greentech industry, one of the largest in the world. It develops an integrated and interdisciplinary theoretical framework in which to assess the relationships between innovation, growth and financing from a firm-level perspective; it then tests this framework empirically. In essence, the study finds that: (1) Innovative activity and corporate growth depend heavily on the availability of capital. At the same time, it appears that particularly innovative firms are more likely to face financial constraints. (2) A lack of funds is very apparent for around a quarter of the firms investigated and seems most severe in the early part of the growth state, where firms focus on commercializing existing products. (3) Government support programs only partially offset these effects

Contenu
Review of Existing Knowledge about Greentech.- Review of Other Relevant Literature.- Theoretical Framework.- Empirical Analysis.