Innovation and sustainability : create the innovative organisation

This paper describes the ecological concept of strategic fit in order to enhance sustainable and innovative organisations. The Ecological System Model integrates concepts of ecology and evolutionary economic theory by comparing organisations and ecosystems at a consistent system level. It introduces a taxonomy of organisations from tundra to tropical rainforest and aligns ‘open innovation’ with the participative concept of people-market-combinations. It wants to contribute to the development of theory and practice of social innovation (creating new richer relations between people and environment) in such a way, that it enhances (business models for) productivity as well as other values.