Developing a new scale for measuring sustainability-oriented innovation

Sustainability-oriented innovation is a developing area in the academic literature, and existing measurement models are either lacking in scope or they have not been validated. Following an extensive review of existing academic literature, this paper addresses this gap by developing a new sustainability-oriented innovation scale. The scale includes elements from the triple bottom line, which incorporates social, environmental, and financial considerations. Environmental considerations are further broken down into carbon footprint, pollution, and materials life cycle. Notably, we also separate capability (could we do it), evaluation (do we measure it), and performance (do we put it into practice in our products and services, and operations). As a holistic model we also include strategy, partnerships, and demand. The validity of the scale was tested first through a pilot study with 23 respondents, and second through a survey study with 202 respondents. Scale evaluation tests confirm the consistency, convergent, and discriminant validity of the new sustainability-oriented innovation scale. Both exploratory and confirmatory analysis results confirm that the theorised scale is a good fit for the data. The contribution of this paper is a comprehensive, validated survey instrument to measure the capability of organisations to deliver sustainable innovation.