Green and competitive - Influences on environmental new product development performance

This article reports the findings of a large-scale research project on environmental new product development (ENPD) within British manufacturers. A major contribution of this article is the attempt to integrate new product development (NPD) and environmental management philosophies in order to develop and empirically test a theoretical framework for ENPD and performance. As such, it is one of the first studies to go beyond the anecdotal evidence in the extant literature, to empirically research ENPD activities and their impacts. This contributes to the debate about the potential for firms to be "green and competitive" by examining the relationship between ENPD activities and market and eco-performance for environmental new products. Contrary to the popular perception, the results suggest that there is more synergy than conflict between the conventional and environmental product development paradigms. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.