Innovation Management for Sustainable Commercial aviation

This bachelor thesis aims to find out how the process of creating and implementing sustainable innovations for commercial aviation takes place and what impacts sustainable innovations have on competitiveness in the aviation industry ecosystem. The work is written as an exploratory study. The research design is qualitative. The practical part of the work is based on interviewing experts, whose field of work is focused on innovation in the aviation industry. Thematic analysis is based on two-level data coding and is used for analyzing and data interpretation. The results of the research identified the main participants who influence innovation for sustainable commercial aviation, the stages of the innovation life cycle and the generation of CO2 emissions across these stages. Furthermore, obstacles for the adoption of sustainable innovations were identified. These obstacles include insufficient awareness and willingness of management to implement innovations, financial difficulty, insufficient international cooperation and the resumption of commercial aviation after the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the work presents a prediction of sustainable innovations and four possible typologies of innovations for sustainable commercial aviation. Last but not least, the practical part reveals the positive and negative impacts of sustainable innovations on competitiveness, where the positive impacts consist of, for example: increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, better market position, higher revenues and profitability enabling faster development and research. Negative impacts consist of, for example: losing customers due to higher airplane ticket prices.