Mobilizing Dynamic‐Capability Microfoundations for Sustainability‐Oriented Innovation: The Role of Innovation Champions

ABSTRACT Organizations face growing pressure to respond to environmental and social challenges, yet research has not sufficiently explained how organizational actors mobilise dynamic‐capability microfoundations across the development of sustainability‐oriented innovations. Drawing on 68 semistructured interviews conducted between March and November 2024 across 18 EU and UK marine firms, this qualitative study examines how innovation champions and related actors support sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring. The analysis identifies an interconnected process: market exposure and network relationships support sensing sustainability‐oriented opportunities; perceived product–capability fit shapes whether those opportunities progress to seizing; and managerial mobilization, cross‐functional problem‐solving, and relationship coordination support reconfiguration. Rather than treating every influential manager as an innovation champion, the study distinguishes championing activities—persistent advocacy, boundary spanning, resource mobilization, and coordination—from formal organizational positions. The study contributes by explaining how actor‐level mechanisms connect successive dynamic‐capability stages in a sustainability‐oriented innovation context. Product–capability fit is presented as an emerging transition mechanism that requires further testing rather than as an entirely novel construct.