Constrained sustainability innovation: insights from an inductive study of the global wine industry

In dynamic and turbulent contexts many firms are trying to develop innovative sustainability solutions. Managers across the globe from this study discussed sustainability innovations in terms of product innovation (products, services, product-service bundles), process innovation, and organizational innovation. However, forces act to constrain sustainability innovations in some agricultural industries including the wine industry.This article reports findings on forces constraining sustainability innovation from an ongoing six-year investigation into global contemporary wine marketing and sustainability. This inductive study, with theory-building grounded theory and phenomenological data collection, has been conducted relying upon a large number of in-depth interviews and using traditional interpretive trustworthiness criteria to ensure valid data were collected and the best interpretations developed. Executive perspectives from wineries of seven countries yielded insights to the notion of constraints to sustainability innovations and why, in some cases, making progress is difficult.