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Projects are increasingly becoming the key means of benefits realisation through sustainable innovation. Yet, the literature has predominantly focused on the “sustainability of projects”, emphasising traditional project short-term success metrics like time, cost and quality. This narrow perspective falls short of explaining how organisations should leverage sustainable innovation to generate broader project benefits. Our research addresses this gap by taking the recent “sustainability by project” conceptualisation. We answer the questions: (RQ1) “How do projects realise benefits through sustainable innovation?” and (RQ2) What are the drivers and challenges for organisations developing these projects?”

The empirical context is the European Space Economy. We performed a single case study regarding the European Space Agency Business application program, which aims to foster sustainable innovation to realise the benefits to society. Following a grounded theory approach, we conducted and analysed 44 interviews with managers and triangulated them with secondary data.

We build a theoretical framework explaining how projects realise benefits through sustainable innovation. We found that the drivers for benefits realisation are (1) envisioning a common sustainable future and (2) opening to the project ecology. Challenges are (1) struggling to take off sustainable innovation and (2) having a short-sighted view of the future. We also identified the practices and conditions managers consider antecedents of the drivers and challenges.

Managers may implement the identified practices to activate key drivers and navigate challenges in achieving project benefits through sustainable innovation. Policymakers could utilise these insights to shape policies that foster a project ecology conducive to sustainable innovation and long-term benefit realisation.

Our paper contributes to reconciling sustainable innovation and project benefit realisation. We offer a new empirical-grounded perspective to pivot from the “sustainability of projects” toward the “sustainability by projects”, showing the drivers and challenges for project benefits realisation.

Megaprojects provide an ideal context for exploring the dynamic characteristics of stakeholders within a collaborative innovation system. This research aims to examine the changes in stakeholder salience and functional roles during the evolution of such a system.

This study is empirically grounded on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge (HZMB) megaproject in China, analyzed with the stakeholder salience, stakeholder functional role, stakeholder dynamics and collaborative innovation system theoretical lens.

The megaproject collaborative innovation system can be divided into four stages: the birth stage, development stage, mature stage and re-innovation stage. Stakeholder salience generally remains unchanged throughout the lifecycle of the collaborative innovation system, except for engineering consulting firms (ECF). ECF transitioned from a definitive stakeholder to an expectant stakeholder upon project completion. The number of definitive stakeholders during the first three stages increases gradually. Besides, stakeholder functional roles shift in eight different directions throughout the lifecycle of the megaproject collaborative innovation system because they possess different core resources necessary for implementing innovations and are positioned differently within the collaborative innovation system.

This study contributes to the theory and practice of collaborative innovation in megaprojects. First, it offers insights into the evolution of megaproject collaborative innovation systems from the perspective of stakeholder interactions. Second, it has significant implications for managing stakeholder relationships based on their salience and functional roles at different stages of the collaborative innovation system.