Abstract
Green innovation is critical to sustainability, yet many green inventions do not make it into products. In this study, we argue that integrating green inventions into products poses distinct appropriability challenges. Accordingly, the alignment of an invention's technological domains, both with the firm's prior inventive activities (firm alignment) and with public R&D funding priorities (policy alignment), may matter more for the product integration of green inventions than for the product integration of non-green inventions. Using data on the product integration outcomes of 2160 patented inventions from a European automotive firm, we find that firm alignment is more strongly associated with product integration for green inventions than for non-green inventions. We find no clear evidence of a similar pattern for policy alignment. These findings highlight product integration as a key downstream organizational process in green innovation and clarify how firm and policy alignment relate to green inventions' product integration.
