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Top1. Introduction
The emergence of COVID-19 has impacted heavily on economic and social fields. It is undeniable the emergence of a very diverse set of challenges for the world economies as discussed in the works of Nicola et al. (2020) and Shoss et al. (2021). However, the pandemic has made the need for governments and companies to invest in innovation and sustainability unequivocal. By 2020, it would not be possible to imagine that the daily lives of people and companies would change as drastically as they did, caused by an event as sudden and unpredictable as a pandemic.
COVID-19 made latent the need for a new approach in the way we relate in society and act on the planet, making it urgent and essential to adapt to what is currently called the “new normal”. This new normal should represent a change in attitudes and in the way we face common activities, as well as the way we live on the planet. Several studies like Kadykalo et al. (2021) and Taherzadeh (2021) emphasize this adaptation should be “green”, in which the emphasis should be on preserving the environment and diversity on our planet and avoiding the mistakes of the past that brought us here. The focus on sustainability that was already presented in studies such as Arora (2018), Klakegg (2015), and Schroeder et al. (2019) and published in the pre-COVID-19 era, has become even more urgent. According to Ranjbari et al. (2021), the path of sustainability is the path that will allow us a sustainable recovery in the economic and social domains.
The pandemic turned clear the relevance of innovation and a high capacity for coordination and teamwork to meet the immediate challenges posed by COVID-19. In the first phase, it was necessary to help the professionals who are on the front line in fighting the pandemic through funding, human resources, and materials (Voorhees et al., 2020). After that, innovation also assumed a relevant role by developing innovative solutions to combat the effects of COVID-19 in areas such as education, commerce, and culture (Almeida, 2020). A variety of partners collaboratively participated in the development of these solutions, including government entities (e.g., national, regional, and local), the private sector, and civil society.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has developed the Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) which aims to characterize the innovative initiatives developed by countries to face the challenges posed by COVID-19 on a global scale. By the end of March 2021, this observatory had identified a total of 453 innovative initiatives to combat COVID-19. However, two difficulties arise in interpreting this data: (i) very significant asymmetries are observed in the number of initiatives presented by each country; and (ii) not all initiatives address the challenges of sustainability since many of them only sought to find an answer to the immediate challenges posed by COVID-19. In this sense, this study intends to explore the relevance of these projects for the achievement of the sustainable development goals proposed by the United Nations and part of the 2030 Agenda. Portugal was chosen because it is the country with the largest number of innovative initiatives in OPSI, with a total of 37 projects. Two research questions have been established: (RQ1) What is the relevance of COVID-19 initiatives for sustainability?; and (RQ2) What are the sustainable development goals addressed by these initiatives?
The paper is organized as follows: Initially, a theoretical contextualization on the relevance of sustainable development particularly in the context of COVID-19 is given. Next, the methodology adopted in this study is presented. After that, the results are analyzed and discussed considering the relevance of innovative projects in the Portuguese context. Finally, the conclusions of the study and the theoretical and practical implications of this study are addressed. In this section, the limitations of the study are also explored, and indications for future work are given.