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This paper shows how organisational agility allows companies to adopt the necessary changes to remain competitive and produce with a lower environmental impact, implying customers in the value chain.

This investigation uses a cross-sectional design to collect data on the study variables from a sample of 260 Spanish manufacturing organisations. Structural equations with PLS are applied to test hypotheses.

Results show that organisational agility is positively related to eco-innovation. Furthermore, eco-innovation results in a positive relationship with organisational performance. Finally, it has been found that customer involvement positively moderates the effect of organisational agility on new green processes and products and makes green product innovations more successful.

Conclusions indicate that would be advisable that innovative companies promote capabilities such as organisational agility, and integrating customer involvement throughout their value chain, for developing successful new green products increasing their results with a lower environmental impact. Likewise, the customer’s involvement in eco-innovation projects has been found, in companies with agile behaviours, that could aim to increase their performance, helping to react more quickly to market trends and saving money in product development.

This investigation addresses three gaps previously identified in the literature. Firstly, it covers a lack of research on how agility could foster green innovation and how this could positively affect their performance outcomes. Secondly, it studies a moderating factor, customer involvement, and its effects on the relationship between organisational agility and eco-innovation in product and process and between eco-innovation in product and organisational performance. Thirdly, it introduces dynamic capabilities theory through agility concept to study the dynamic context of the eco-environment.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the effect of organisational agility on environmental knowledge as an instrument for the successful development of eco-innovation in products.

This study used a cross-sectional design to collect data on the study variables from a sample of 184 Spanish manufacturing organisations. Structural equations with partial least squares were used to test the hypotheses.

Organisational agility is significantly linked to internal and external environmental knowledge. The results of this study highlight the effect of external knowledge on the success of eco-innovation. Internal environmental knowledge positively moderates the effect of external knowledge on the success of green products.

Based on the dynamic capabilities approach, a theoretical model has been proposed in which organisational agility is configured as an effective capacity for the development of environmental knowledge. The results confirm this relationship and indicate that, although internal environmental knowledge is not decisive in developing new green products, it does enhance the effect of external knowledge on the success of eco-innovation.

Innovative companies must implement organisational agility practices that promote environmental knowledge for the success of new green products. They should also promote both external and internal knowledge.

This study addresses the little explored area of the relationship between organisational agility and the successful development of new green products. The inherent particularities of eco-innovation prompt the need for further studies on the creation of specific knowledge for its promotion. This study concludes that adopting agile practices enables key environmental knowledge for this type of innovation to be created. Additionally, it explores the tensions arising from the dichotomy between internal and external knowledge, with scarce resources allocated to the most effective source. Although both types of knowledge seem to be equally relevant, external knowledge plays a more significant role in the case of eco-innovation. A final contribution of this study is the finding that internal knowledge can further enhance the effect of external knowledge on the development of successful green products.

Eco-innovation has been identified as a source of gaining a competitive advantage on a global scale. To build upon that, this study aims to deepen the understanding of eco-innovation in the context of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and investigates the impact of having a clear eco-innovation strategy on a company's sustainability and performance.

A sample of 249 SMEs located in Portugal and the UK participated and structural equation modelling (SEM) was applied to explore the relationship among the constructs.

The findings reveal that both internal and external factors influence the design of an eco-innovation strategy. However, the relevance of external factors seemed to be more significant for Portuguese SMEs. This study concludes that product/process eco-innovations and green innovation systems are determinants for sustainable performance in SMEs. In contrast, the environmental technologies and organisational eco-innovation dimensions are not determinants. This is observed both in Portuguese and UK SMEs.

Most studies in the field tend to explore the role of eco-innovation in large organisations. This study takes a different approach by exploring its impacts on the sustainable business performance of SMEs. Furthermore, it combines data from two countries, which constitutes a strength and gives the opportunity to explore this phenomenon empirically.