Sustainable and safe by design: key strategic challenges for entrepreneurs and future research agenda

The topic of sustainable and safe by design (SSbD) has attracted the attention of academics and practitioners in the domains of innovation and entrepreneurship due to its ability to appropriately design products and services that fit into the green policy agendas of governments. SSbD is also expected to serve as a way for entrepreneurs to consider sustainability a strategic challenge within their organizations. However, the literature is still scarce in explaining the institutional, practical, and theoretical implications of SSbD on entrepreneurship in specific sectors (e.g., biotechnology and chemicals) and the role of the quadruple helix of innovation actors in such a process. Therefore, in this paper, we shed light on such a phenomenon by proposing a matrix of key strategic challenges for the SSbD based on the scientific review of the specialized literature on sustainable innovation, product design, and entrepreneurship.