New ventures are increasingly recognized as candidates for creating novel sustainable products that challenge existing practices. Yet, succeeding in product innovation for such ventures is challenging due to various uncertainties pertaining to product development, potential demand and sustainability impact of their products. This study investigates how sustainability-oriented ventures engage in product innovation processes; in doing so, it builds upon the theory of effectuation, as a useful approach to decision-making under uncertainty. A longitudinal case study on four sustainability-oriented ventures revealed two different approaches to product innovation in such ventures, namely adaptive and exaptive approaches. While an adaptive approach is characterized by a long-term value proposition a venture engages in, and high fidelity design experiments used to get the commitment of a select number of stakeholders to develop this predefined value proposition, an exaptive approach is characterized by short-term multiple value propositions a venture engages in, and low-fidelity affordable design experiments used to test market potential of these propositions through various stakeholder interactions. Moreover, the way new ventures define their value propositions in relation to sustainability appears to influence the approach they adopt for the product innovation process. While the ambition to transform a particular market towards sustainable practices causes ventures to anchor on a target market, which appears to stimulate an adaptive approach, the ambition to develop a product that can replace existing products or provide similar sustainability benefits in a number of markets causes firms to anchor on a product idea, which appears to stimulate an exaptive approach. We conclude that future studies should explore the implications of different approaches in order to identify best practices for new ventures engaged in product innovation for sustainability.

新创企业越来越被公认为创建挑战现有实践的新型可持续产品的候选人。然而，由于与产品开发，其产品的潜在需求和可持续性影响有关的各种不确定性，为此类企业成功进行产品创新具有挑战性。这项研究调查了以可持续发展为导向的企业如何参与产品创新过程。在此过程中，它以实现理论为基础，是在不确定性条件下进行决策的一种有用方法。对四个以可持续发展为导向的企业进行的纵向案例研究揭示了此类企业中产品创新的两种不同方法，即适应性和适应性方法。自适应方法的特征是企业从事的长期价值主张，高保真设计实验用于获得一定数量的利益相关者的承诺，以开发此预定义的价值主张，而自适应方法的特征在于短期合资企业参与的多个价值主张，以及低保真，可负担的设计实验，用于通过各种利益相关者的互动来测试这些主张的市场潜力。此外，新企业定义其与可持续性相关的价值主张的方式似乎会影响他们在产品创新过程中采用的方法。尽管将特定市场转变为可持续做法的雄心使企业将目标锁定在目标市场上，这似乎激发了一种适应性方法，开发可替代现有产品或在许多市场中提供类似的可持续性利益的产品的雄心促使公司立足于产品创意，这似乎激发了一种启发性的方法。我们得出结论，未来的研究应该探索不同方法的含义，以便为从事产品创新以实现可持续性的新企业确定最佳实践。