18.1
Sustainable Innovation - organization and goal finding
Lotta Hassi
,
Industrial Engineering and Management, Helsinki University of Technology, Espoo, Finland
Sustainable Innovation – organization
and goal finding Lotta
Hassi, Helsinki University of Technology
David
Peck, Delft University of Technology
Kristel
Dewulf, University College of West-Flanders
Renee
Wever, Delft University of Technology
ABSTRACTIt is
often stated that to produce sustainability, incremental improvements will not
suffice: reducing unsustainability is not the same as creating sustainability
(Ehrenfeld, 2008). Radical or systemic innovation is needed but also a change
in the pattern we search for new solutions. This requires stepping away from
the old path, or as Ehrenfeld (2008) illustrates, we should not be “the drunk
who lost the car keys but kept looking for them under the street lamp because that
is where the light was.”
To be able to step out of the ‘beam of the street light' when
searching for sustainable innovation, the organization needs to be designed accordingly
and the design team at the fuzzy front end of the innovation process needs to
be equipped with appropriate tools and methods. There is abundant literature
demonstrating why corporations should go beyond compliance when it comes
to sustainability (e.g. Elkington, 1997; Hawken, 1994) as well as how to
design this commitment into products (e.g. Brezet & Hemel, 1997; Diehl
& Crul, 2007; Tischner, 2000). The challenge lies with getting from ‘why'
to ‘how': who is making it happen and what are the products that
will be produced? (Figure 1). The who and what have received far
less attention than the why and how; Boks (2006) being one of the
notable exceptions regarding the organizational side and Wever, et al (2008)
regarding the goal finding.
Figure 1.
The ‘why' and ‘how' are extensively addressed by existing literature. ‘Who' and
‘What' remain still ill-addressed.
In dealing with the ‘who' in figure 1,
Piasecki et.al (1999) argued that the nature of environmental management over
the previous few decades had been defined by regulatory structures but a new
approach was emerging and a new vision was needed to drive environmental leadership
further. Piasecki et.al (ibid) went on to highlight that there was a major
change emerging in the field of environmental management and it is
environmental leadership that will be crucial as to whether futurist
environmental management would succeed or not. The green wall (ibid) is
a point where the entire organisation refuses to move forward with its
environmental management program. According to Piasecki et al. (ibid), the
reasons for hitting the green wall includes negative or deferred decisions due
to a lack of management support for the environmental management concept and
programme. Also, due to the inability to demonstrate attractive returns on
further investments in the environmental programmes, to others in the
organisation. Traditionally, best practice environmental management
organisations have had difficulty to adapt their organisations into the
business enterprise.What comes to the ‘How' (Figure 1), there is an array of
existing ecodesign tools that guide the design team in the design process. However,
these tools are meant for a phase in the design process, where the idea and
specifications for the product have already been decided, and only incremental
changes regarding the products sustainability can be made. (Wever, Boks &
Bakker, 2008; Ölundh & Ritzén, 2004)Therefore, it is crucial to
take sustainability into consideration already in the early phase of the design
process, often referred to as the fuzzy front end (FFE) (Buijs, 2003). It is at
the FFE that the company realizes the need for innovation, generates ideas,
identifies opportunities, and develops a concept of the product idea (ibid).
The FFE still remains ill-addressed in the existing sustainable design
literature (Wever et al., 2008).Yet, identifying possibilities for sustainable
innovation takes place in this phase.
If we accept that sustainable innovation involves moving from
the design of individual products to the design of whole systems, it can
involve new mixes of products and services, new patterns of ownership, or
shared/communal use of products. It might involve replacing physical products
with a ‘dematerialized' service or even questioning the extent to which a
product or service is really necessary (Roy, 2006). How do we move beyond the
current status quo? The current technical ‘eco-efficiency' approach to environmental
sustainability is more likely to be adopted in the short and medium term. What
however is needed is an organizational change that allows a move to radical,
socio-technical sustainable innovations. The research on the ‘Who?'
suggested in this paper will look into how organizations recruit, select,
develop, and support the key decision makers in order to facilitate sustainable
innovation. Also, how could they identify these people and how the development
of ‘creative networks' could be facilitated.
Possibilities for sustainable innovation need to be
identified during the FFE. To support this, methods to identify sustainability
innovations need to be created. In these methods, sustainability must be
presented as a driver for innovation and value creation, instead of merely a
boundary condition. The methods should assist companies in answering the
question ‘What can we do to create sustainability?' in a manner that
increases the value recognized and received by the end user and the company
itself. Also, a well thought through product portfolio strategy is crucial in
this phase. The research on the ‘What?' suggested in this paper looks
into cases of sustainable innovations to identify elements of a successful sustainable
FFE process, and eventually generates methods for innovating for sustainability
at the FFE.
This paper is a position paper of the proposed research
projects of the authors. This paper will review and discuss the current body of
literature on sustainable product innovation, identify the gaps and present
proposals for research. These gaps can be seen in figure 1 and are the ‘who'
and ‘what' boxes. The ‘who' will explore the persona of the key decision makers
in terms of new transformational strategies (Ehrenfeld, 2008). Next to this is
the crucial ‘what' box that explores the front end activity in sustainable
innovation. The paper brings together the ‘who' and the ‘what' in the journey
towards the ‘possibility of allowing all life to flourish on earth' (Ehrenfeld,
2008).