The problems of environmentally involved firms: innovation obstacles and essential issues in the achievement of environmental innovation

•It is necessary to distinguish between financial and knowledge obstacles.•The factors hindering innovation are accentuated in environmental innovation.•Cooperation and public funding are important in environmental innovation.•Environmental innovation barriers are addressed systematically and comprehensively.

Environmental innovation has been discussed from different approaches in the last decade, due to its increasing importance for business competitiveness and as an engine for the economic development of a country, especially in recessionary economic phases. However, the study of the factors that hinder the achievement of environmental innovations has been largely neglected. This paper focuses on the obstacles facing firms involved in environmental innovations and how they still manage to achieve these innovations. The data used comes from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS) conducted in Spain in the year 2012, while the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test and binary logistic regression are the statistical techniques used. The findings show that the obstacles that companies involved in environmental innovations face are greater and different to those faced by companies which are not involved in them. Consequently, environmental innovation requires different action plans from those for non-environmental innovation; these actions include public funding, and cooperation, as well as other specific support measures. This research provides a systematic framework for environmental innovation and the ways to overcome the barriers to this innovation. Thereby supplying a roadmap for the creation of an innovation system that constitutes a favourable context for overcoming these obstacles, thus bringing about the success of the environmental innovation process through certain critical factors.