Sustainability or sustainable development are the buzzwords of the last decade. Scientists, politicians and civil society organizations call for attention and stress that the population today demands more than our planet can deliver in terms of resources. This trend demands radical rethinking regarding the way society lives, consumes and produces. Here, we focus on what the demand for sustainability implies for corporations regarding the urge to redesign or produce new more sustainable products. Herein, we focus on electric cars, which is the result of sustainable processes and initiatives in the car industry. The case of Renault illustrates how the firm based its sustainable strategy on its absorptive capacities. By formalizing on an explicit layer through the label ECO2, Renault has been able to communicate its sustainable implicit knowledge. As a learning organization, it did not only develop the necessary knowledge to anticipate future changes, but it also created the dynamic capabilities to adapt once the expected changes occurred. Our findings show that sustainable knowledge creation, acquisition, combination, and exploitation is a 2-way process: inside-out and outside-in between the firm and its environment. In the chicken and egg dilemma, who came first? The electric car of Renault illustrates this process, and therefore represents an appropriate setting to explore these dynamic processes. Electric vehicles express and result from (1) environmental requirements, and (2) Renault’s overall strategy, including its sustainable development strategy and its absorptive capacity.
