ABSTRACT
The issue of environmental innovation and its effects on overall firm performance and competitiveness in district-oriented local productive systems is particularly important in industrial areas with high density of firms, where clusters of firms may generate critical emissions and waste-hotspots. It is possible that these negative environmental features may be counterbalanced by the high propensity for innovation in district firms, where physical proximity enables them to exploit networking relationships and knowledge spillovers that dynamically increase the environmental efficiency of the productive area. Environmental innovative capacity is a current key issue. Environmental innovations are particularly crucial in local industrial frameworks since they often give rise to externalities with dual benefits: on the one hand, they provide the typical R&D (Research and Development) spillovers; on the other hand, they reduce environmental externalities (Rennings 2000; Jaffe et al. 1995). They contribute simultaneously to the Lisbon Objectives on growth and innovation and the Gothenburg priorities on sustainable development (IPTS 2004).
