What Impact Does Innovation and Sustainable Entrepreneurship Have on Competitiveness?

Abstract

[EN] Sustainable development and entrepreneurship are increasingly high profile issues and matters of importance to different international agendas. Alongside this interest, there have emerged studies on entrepreneurship and innovation that point to their driving positive impacts at the level of regional development. With their research the authors intend to bridge the gap that exists in the literature on the relationship between innovation and sustainable entrepreneurship, in the sense that innovation does not have to imply actions that suppose a growth of entrepreneurship without any planning. The objectives of this research involve contributing towards the literature on this field of study in terms of knowledge about which environmental and innovation variables best foster the greatest impact of entrepreneurial activities. To this end, the authors deployed aggregate data at the national level gathered by the Environment, Population, International Trade, Labour and National Accounts Statistics, from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for the years between and including 2005 and 2012 and for the 35 member states of this organisation. They correspondingly verify that environmental patents do have a positive impact on Real GDP.