Can FDI make Spanish SMEs more sustainable through its influence on the innovative process? Companies can contribute to sustainable development while at the same time being successful in an increasingly dynamic and globalized market. This can be effectively achieved through innovation oriented towards sustainability (Sharma, 2002; Paramanathan et al., 2004; Schaltegger, 2011). A line of research is under development stemming from the 1987 Brundtland report, which investigates various areas in relation to sustainability-oriented innovation (Hall, 2002; Fichter and Paech, 2004; Paech, 2007; Wüstenhagen, 2008; Coenen and Lopez, 2010; Schaltegger and Wagner, 2011
). Although, after large companies became aware that their activities can influence sustainable development so too did SMEs (Bos-Brouwers, 2010), it should be noted that the innovative process of SMEs differs from large enterprises (Nieto and Santamaría, 2010), mainly due to a lack of economic resources and human capital (Narula, 2004). In this regard, these shortcomings can be met through FDI that provides knowledge assets (Haskel et al., 2007), external capital and management capacity, and generates new employment opportunities and facilitates technology transfer (De Gregorio, 2005; Iamsiraroj and Doucouliagos, 2015). Moreover, in addition to filling these knowledge and capital deficiencies, sustainable development has also come under the spotlight recently (UNCTAD, 2014), as, through its positioning, FDI1 can positively influence the well-being of societies. The scientific community’s interest in the influence of this kind of investment is, therefore, being redirected, but there is a great lack of knowledge regarding the FDI-sustainability relationship (Kardos, 2014).