Sustainability perspectives on product innovation

Sustained organizational success depends on the effective development and launch of product innovations. Increasingly, successful new products must also address major societal challenges such as climate change, environmental pollution, resource scarcity, and growing inequality. In addition to expanding regulatory requirements, customers are becoming more demanding regarding the sustainability of products and increasingly prefer more sustainable alternatives.

At the same time, rising scarcity and costs of resources, materials, energy, transportation, pollution, and waste disposal are pushing organizations to develop more sustainable solutions in order to achieve profitable new products. As a result, the social and environmental sustainability of new products has become an important source of competitive advantage. Moreover, many individuals within organizations are increasingly recognizing their responsibility for societal challenges and are actively seeking ways to contribute to more sustainable product innovation.

In the course Sustainability Perspectives on Product Innovation, students will explore the opportunities and actions that can be taken within and beyond the product development process to create product innovations that are both socially and environmentally sustainable while remaining economically viable.

The course is delivered through a combination of theory, assignments, tutorials, and self-study. Topics covered include, among others:

• Sustainability objectives in product innovation
• Product innovation for the circular economy
• Sustainability in the value chain of new products
• New product sustainability through Business Model Innovation
• Strategic design decisions for new product sustainability
• Customer responses to new products' sustainability
• Sustainability perspectives on product innovation processes

Students completing this course will be able to:

• Describe the importance and objectives of sustainable product innovation from environmental, social, and economic perspectives.
• Analyze the sustainability of products across their life cycle and value chain, including principles such as cradle-to-cradle.
• Apply key strategies, methods, tools, and processes to develop more socially and environmentally sustainable, and simultaneously profitable, product innovations.
• Evaluate consumer responses to sustainable products and their implications for product innovation strategies.

• Lecture slides and notes
• Approximately fifteen scientific articles from high quality academic journals