Exploring the interplay between intellectual property models and sustainability transitions: A multi-level analysis

Research on international technology transfer and partnership agreements provides a comprehensive understanding of country-level impacts of intellectual property (IP) rights on sustainability transitions. However, firm-level studies on how firms use and share their IP to support sustainability practices remains limited. The paper disentangles the relationship between firm-level IP models and sustainability practices drawing from a cross-case analysis of 28 firms offering sustainable innovations across four sectors. Analysis of firms' year-wise data collected from 854 documents (typically 1996–2021) and 58 in-depth interviews exploring linkage between IP models and sustainability practices of firms engaged in sustainable innovation provide six key findings: (a) emphasis on safeguarding registered and unregistered IP assets among firms with sustainable innovations; (b) widespread adoption of selectively open inbound IP models coupled with diverse IP sharing mechanisms; (c) a preference for collaborative (joint) IP ownership among internally driven firms, contrasting with a tendency for exclusive in-licensing among those reacting to external pressures; (d) a divergence in outbound IP models, with internally motivated firms favouring selectively open approaches and externally driven firms favouring closed IP models; (e) the adoption of fully open outbound IP models democratize sustainable innovation diffusion; and (f) leveraging broadly open outbound IP models alongside closed or selectively open models balances widespread use with access control and achieves significant social sustainability. A framework is hence developed to guide technology-sharing policies and procedures. Therefore, the paper creates a platform for prescribing sustainable IP incentives for encouraging firms to share IP for wider diffusion of sustainable innovations.