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Green innovation is becoming increasingly important for companies and whole societies, and the research in this field has essentially increased in recent years. As green innovation is expected to ensure both environmental sustainability and economical profitability, it might seriously affect the partly colliding interests of various groups of stakeholders. However, from previous studies less is known about the impact that various groups of stakeholders and particularly the relationships among these stakeholders exert on the implementation of green innovations. To address this gap we first substantiate the relevance of the stakeholder theory for innovation studies in general and green innovations in particular. Furthermore, we argue that from the innovator's perspective green innovations are likely to be affected by the interactions with as well as between many primary and secondary stakeholders. To explore this issue in‐depth we conducted a case study of the implementation of an offshore wind farm in Germany. Our research revealed that network ties among stakeholders can be both conducive and detrimental to the green innovation. The insights gained in our study contribute to the stakeholder analysis for the implementation of green innovations.
Fliaster et al. (Tue,) studied this question.