Eco-Innovation and the Contribution of Companies to the Sustainable Development

By addressing the issue of eco-innovation, we will try to provide answers to some important questions, such as: what is and why the eco-innovation is important and which are the ways to achieve it. Right from the beginning, we specify that the eco-innovation represents an essential component of innovation that is a factor of social and economic progress having the role in creating opportunities for sustainable economic activities. Any society and any company that wants to be environmentally friendly and prosperous must promote a fair type of innovation that allows for new ways of addressing environmental issues, reducing the energy and resources consumption by promoting sustainable economic activities. That is why the eco-innovation appears to be an important factor in solving the issues regarding the natural resources, the energy security and climate change. With reference to the economy, the eco-innovation aims to reduce the energy and the materials costs as well as the realization of products and services, markets, consumers and new business models. The present paper investigates the role and importance of eco-innovation in developing a sustainable economy, taking into account: the companies' attitude towards the eco-innovation process; the political and legislative framework that supports and promotes the eco-innovation; the services support for this process; the financial resources and the access to funding. The paper seeks to: describe the importance and the necessity of green industry and also the implication and participation of companies in the process of eco-innovation; establish the companies' attitudes towards the eco-innovation; establish the benefits of companies that have applied eco-innovation and their attitude to this process; identify business models that have applied the eco-innovation model and show, based on indicators, the advantages in this regard. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 13th International Conference Interdisciplinarity in Engineering.