Abstract:

Over centuries, the technological innovation has been largely considered by researchers and practitioners due to its benefits both to users by increasing their comfort and to developers who therefore increased their incomes directly or indirectly.  Nowadays, changes are being increasingly more rapid, even aggressive, the technological evolution forcing companies to find, develop and apply new methods of survival on a strongly competitive market. Within the ecological crisis context, from the latest decades, it becomes more and more important that technological innovations in all arenas shall not affect the stability of the natural environment and find viable and quick solutions in order to diminish the negative effects of massive industrialization. This paper aims to covering some of the motivations and limits of eco-innovations, as well as the main supporting methods in EU, USA and Japan.