New is always better – On the sustainability of innovative firms

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Type and Duration

FFF-Förderprojekt, March 2021 until February 2022 (finished)

Coordinator

Chair of Entrepreneurship and Leadership

Main Research

Growth and Complexity

Description

The aspired project is meant to contribute to the research in the field of innovation and sustainability. Our intention hereby is to establish a direct impact of the innovation capability of a firm on its sustainability performance. Therefore, we will first collect and evaluate current literature regarding this topic before gathering data for our analysis. We will quantify a firm’s innovation capability by using a text-mining method to analyze the language and the usage of innovation-related words in a large body of financial analyst reports. The resulting measure will then, with a certain time-lag which is due to the deferred effects of innovation, be compared to the respective firm’s sustainability performance in the form of their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) rating. Additionally, we want to examine whether there are different effects on the E-, S-, or G-pillar and if these effects are the same in different industries. We expect the innovation capability of a firm to have a significant positive effect on its sustainability performance, but we also expect this to vary regarding different pillars and industries. All our results are meant to be published in internationally renowned journals.

Project Manager

Jennifer Nadine Schein, MSc

Fabian Stein, M.Sc.