ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses various stimulus factors comprising the industrial economic, the environmental economic and the environmental management perspectives. From the industrial economic perspective, technological progress is an economic phenomenon that can be explained at the microeconomic level of the individual market according to factors from the supply and demand sides. These include: technological opportunities that are opportunities to access economically usable knowledge, and market demand. The economic advantages are essentially the following direct and indirect benefits: cost-saving, safeguarding market share and a positive corporate image in terms of both public opinion and the financial community. The discussion on the determinants and effects of innovations in the literature was dominated for a long time by the two factors: the technology push and the market pull hypotheses. The technological potential that companies discover particularly in the product utilisation phase seems to be another driver for environmental product innovations.
