Open innovation in the food and beverage industry: Green supply chain and green innovation

Many actors in the market are highlighting larger concern on health and environment. These concerns are pushing companies of the food and beverage (F&B) industry to increase their environmental awareness (Chiou et al., 2011). In this frame, the advent of open innovation (OI) paradigm could represent a key asset in helping firms to maintain or increase their competitive advantage; however, there are not many empirical works on open innovation strategies in food and beverage context (Bigliardi and Galati, 2013). In the light of that, among the green practices, the aim of this exploratory research is to understand the importance and the degree of implementation of open innovation practices in the food and beverage supply chain. To pursue this aim, we used case study analysis taking six examples among food and beverage supply chain small companies and the perspectives of two customers.