The last 40 years have seen environmental issues rise sharply in both national and international agendas. What began as a concern about the deleterious effects of industrial activities on the natural environment (Parto, 2007) has grown as the effects of climate change have become apparent. This has resulted in concern not merely for environmental performance improvements but to promote a broader sustainable development agenda (Pinkse and Kolk, 2012; Griggs et al., 2013). It is now increasingly recognized that innovation policies have a positive contribution to make to improving environmental outcomes (OECD, 2009; Demirel and Kesidou, 2011; Blundel et al., 2012). This is reflected in the academic literature where a body of research into environmental innovations has emerged and is now growing rapidly, spread across a variety of disciplines. This Special Issue of the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation brings together a set of papers that focus on social and technological innovations designed to address the environmental sustainability challenges that we face today. Several contributions were first presented as part of the Economic and Social Research Council seminar series, ‘Green Innovation: Making it Work’, which took place between 2015 and 2017.1 Co-organized by Nottingham Trent University and The Open University, the series examined many types of pro-environmental innovation, with a particular focus on the factors that constrain and enable their practical implementation.