Developing a conceptual framework to identify corporate innovations through engagement with non-profit stakeholders

Purpose – The pressure on companies to position themselves as responsible corporate citizens has been identified as a key driver of the increase in collaborative relationships between corporations and non-profit organizations, with innovation and learning recognized as benefits to the firms from such relationships. This paper attempts to identify factors that can foster (or impede) the identification and development of firm-related innovations that result from engagement with non-profit stakeholders.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper reviews literature within the stakeholder, cross-sector collaboration, and innovation genres, to examine business-non-profit relations specifically in the context of innovation generation.

Findings – The outcome of the literature review is a conceptual process model of cross-sector-collaboration. This identifies firm motivations, engagement conditions and intra-firm factors that would appear to influence innovation outcome, and which would benefit from empirical exploration.

Originality/value – The paper begins to develop a framework for considering business-non-profit relations in the context of innovation generation and aims to further one's understanding of factors in the engagement process that can influence an innovative outcome.