Facoltà: Ingegneria Gestionale - classe LM-31
Collocazione: 19837
Autore: Mussida Francesco
Data: 20/12/2021
Titolo: Innovation management and sustainability: evidence from the logistic industry
Relatore: Pizzurno Emanuele
Correlatore: Creazza Alessandro
Autorizzazione per la consultazione: NO
Le tesi si possono consultare unicamente in sede
Innovative technologies and awareness of sustainability are discussed worldwide every day, and usually, these two topics are merged into a unique subject that creates a huge trend. The adoption of innovative solutions to pursue sustainability is a theme explored in different contexts. This thesis aims to verify the presence of the trend in the logistic world. Therefore, this thesis will briefly present the main theories and approaches related to logistics, innovation, and sustainability. Moreover, it aimed to deliver the innovative solutions adopted in the logistics world to pursue sustainability since a knowledge gap exists. To pursue the stated objective, this thesis has followed a two- step approach to research the information needed. Therefore, as the starting point, a systematic review of the literature was carried out to understand the arising hypothesis coming from the scientific community. Then, on-field research was performed to verify the hypothesis coming from the literature. A brief insight on the results is proposed hereafter. It has been discovered that, according to the literature, there are mainly three different approaches when dealing with manage “Sustainable innovation in the logistic industry”. Therefore, we can have: i) Open innovation, ii) Big data and KPIs, and iii) e- commerce and last-mile. Among these three ways, the most interesting one is the first one, such as it has also been discovered that logistics companies do need to exploit someone's other knowledge to manage innovation since their investment in research and development is usually tiny. To verify this thesis, we have conducted on-field research. The research was done upon direct interviews with selected logistic players answering questions varying from the brief description of the company to the management of sustainability, passing by, of course, the managing of innovation. The results were quite intriguing such as we have discovered that logistic companies are aware of sustainability problems and are increasing overall sustainability even though some direct applications of pure green technologies are not used. Moreover, all the companies are aware that to be innovative means to be competitive. However, due to the lack of resources caused by the tiny percentage of turnover invested in R&D, logistics players must manage their innovation with an open innovation approach causing the enlargement and the strengthening of the alliances’ network.
