Methods, tools, and theories to assess the propensity to introduce innovations in the agrifood sector

Companies must be able to create increasingly quick and disruptive solutions in response to the fundamental changes that are affecting the global scenario (e.g. the change that are affecting the market after the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine or the climate change) in order to maintain competitiveness and sustainability. Many small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), which represent the core engine of the economy of many countries, seem to no longer have a secure future unless they constantly innovate their products, processes, and business models (Bertello et al., 2022). However, integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors to boost sustainability in business activities needs to rethink corporate purpose, redesign the management system, and allocate financial resources (Cupertino et al., 2021), penalizing, above all shortly, firms’ profitability. Therefore, the need to innovate is closely related to the risks of innovation and companies, in particular SMEs, often live this condition as a barrier and not as an opportunity. The food system is particularly affected by these challenges. Its impact on environmental end socio—economic aspects require an urgent transition toward more sustainable models, but these changes need innovation and several factors (e.g the large number of small and medium-sized enterprises, the poor coordination among the actors of a supply chain, the lack of cooperation and knowledge) make it difficult. For this reason, the recent international political programs (e.g. RDPs 2014-22; EU-Green Deal; EU-Farm to Fork) are trying to support the agri-food companies creating around them a complex network of relationships and knowledge. The degree of companies’ openness to the external context and the ability to cooperate on research and innovation issues are crucial elements, to influence the technological dynamism of companies and their innovative performance and, more generally, the performance of the national innovation system. Through the implementation of a systematic literature review, this study intends to investigate about what are and how to measure the barriers and the incentives that affect the innovation adoption by agri-food entrepreneurs. The aim is to create a tool useful to policy maker both to design political programs that meet the really interests of companies and to make post evaluation, hoping that the perceptions of barriers becomes ever lower than the incentives ones.