A taxonomy of SME green growth and implications on strategy

Green growth involves aligning economic growth with environmental objectives and transitioning toward a resource-efficient, low-carbon economy. The objective of this chapter is to present a taxonomy of green growth and green transition for SMEs and examine the relationship between green SME growth and strategies of exploration, exploitation, and ambidexterity. Survey data was gathered from Finnish SMEs and consists of responses from 204 SME owner-managers. Our results show that based on SMEs’ green transition orientation, three different categories can be found. The results indicate that green growth SMEs use strategies of both exploration and exploitation, and that actual green growth is related to an ambidextrous approach. The research contributes to understanding green growth in SMEs as a phenomenon, and its linkages with different exploration, exploitation, and ambidexterity strategies. A framework is proposed for classifying SMEs in relation to green growth for use in future entrepreneurship research.