Innovation is generally conceptualized as generation and implementation of new and useful ideas (e.g. Amabile et al., 1996). While past research has provided manifold insights on its first stage, i.e. knowledge creation (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) and creativity (Hennessy and Amabile, 2010), less is known about the implementation of innovation (e.g. Govindarajan and Trimble, 2010). Concerning the latter, previous studies addressed particularly intra-organizational barriers to innovation (e.g. Oreg, 2). On the contrary, the role the external stakeholders play for the implementation of innovations has been under-investigated. To address this gap we first highlight the relevance of the stakeholder theory (e.g. Laplume et al. 2010; Parmar et al. 2010) for innovation studies. Second, we argue that the role the stakeholders play in the implementation process is affected by the industry as well as the type of innovation as important contingencies factors. In doing so, we show that in the power supply industry in general, and with respect to green innovations that change the whole eco-system in particular (Yergin, 2011; Weizsacker et al., 2010) stakeholder management is a critical success factor for innovations. Third, to explore in-depth the distinctive interests, actions and responses of various stakeholders throughout the implementation process of green innovations, we conducted a case study of the implementation of an offshore wind farm by a medium-size projecting company in Germany. We found that the activities of internal and external stakeholders have several positive and negative effects on the innovation process. In addition, we show that these activities can also cause an essential transformation of the innovation content. In sum, the insights gained in our study contribute to both the stakeholder analysis for implementation of innovations and a deeper understanding of green innovations.
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