CSR can play a major role in companies’ competitiveness. As a strategic and management approach, CSR can help businesses to exploit the opportunities for innovation presented by current and future social and environmental challenges. However, in practice CSR activities are still rarely – or only to a limited degree – linked with innovation management.
The project aimed to illustrate the effects of CSR on the various phases of the innovation cycle, and to develop suitable instruments and tools for SMEs and family businesses. This generated scientifically-based recommendations for ways in which SMEs and family businesses can optimise or implement innovation processes, on the basis of their CSR strategy and Goals.
The project was funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency under the fourth call for the “Aufbau” line of the COIN – Cooperation & Innovation programme (programme owners/sponsors: Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology; Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy).
