Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs) develop and transfer new technologies to industry. Considering environnemental and social challenges in their activities is becoming more and more important. Integrating these challenges within an organization requires a global and coherent method, but also flexibility to adapt to the various activities of the organisationz. Eco-innovation is an approach that can meet these goals. However, literature has already shown that the main obstacles for the integration of eco-innovation come from the lack of global approaches adapted to companies' practices. In this paper, we characterise the specific activities of RTOs. Then, we specified the need for an eco innovation approach for RTOs. We carried out a functional analysis to formalise the need and identify the main functions that the eco-innovation approach must fulfil. We conducted exploratory interviews with various stakholders from an RTO in order to validate the identified needs and functions.
