Exploring the Role of the Innovation Management System Certification in Achieving Sustainability

All levels of society express environmental concerns. Companies are increasingly put under pressure to apply sustainable practices within their businesses to solve the limitations of the current economy and save resources for future generations. Indeed, sustainability and innovation are strongly interlinked and, thanks to new products and organizational processes development, are crucial factors to let companies gain a competitive advantage. However, introducing sustainable innovations just occasionally is no longer sufficient for companies to endure in the market; the only viable way is to pursue continuous innovation, which guarantee high profitability, competitive benefit, and better market reputation. Standardization could be a helpful tool to systematize continuous innovations within firms. This paper aims to understand the relation between the concepts of innovation, sustainability, and standardization. To this end, a Collaborative Methodology Research (CMR) has been used, involving a team made both by researchers and executives of an Italian textile company. The firm asked the research team for support in introducing and implementing an Innovation Management System (IMS), regulated by the standard UNI EN ISO 56002:2021. The outcome of the first phases of the research suggested that the activities assess the innovation level and sustainable performances of the firm enabled better cooperation within the company and improved communication among the different divisions. It is also reasonable to hypothesize that the effort to introduce an IMS improved the governance-related sustainable performances of the company. The contribution revolves around i) exploring the relationship among sustainability, innovation and standardization; ii) discussing methods, tools, challenges and possible benefits of introducing and implementing an IMS within a manufacturing company.