Although many companies consider sustainability aspects in their innovation strategy, it seems that sustainability is far from being an integral part of innovation management, observes Claus Lang-Koetz.
He says that the drive for a sustainable development is becoming stronger.
“There is an increasing environmental awareness in society, and people see the urgent need to tackle climate change and the effect of pollution in nature. Political demands in the “Fridays for Future“ initiative become more influential and the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) are being considered actively by more and more companies.
“This also has a strong influence on companies and their activities for innovation. It is interesting to see that the term sustainable innovation or sustainability-oriented innovation is increasingly used in research, but also in the industry.
Current research has shown that pursuing sustainability-oriented innovations requires a special approach; there is a need for dedicated frameworks, methods, tools and forms of organization.
I recently conducted a survey with a co-worker among German industry, It shows that although a large share of companies consider sustainability aspects in the goals established in their innovation strategy, it seems that sustainability is far from being an integral part of innovation management.
There seems to be the need to clarify what sustainability means for innovation management inside of the companies, to formalise the topic by specifying goals, determining assessment criteria and to strengthen the interlinkage between sustainability and innovation management.
Another need identified by a majority of participants is improving interaction with customers on the relevance and benefits of sustainability.
There are many papers to recommend. However, I found the analysis in the following paper appealing:
Gaziulusoy, A.I. (2015), “A critical review of approaches available for design and innovation teams through the perspective of sustainability science and system innovation theories”, Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 107, pp. 366–377.
Claus was a track chair at the 2021 R&D Management Conference.
Track chair: Claus Lang-Koetz, Professor for Sustainable Technology and Innovation Management at the Institute for Industrial Ecology at Pforzheim University (Germany). Visit his Twitter profile here.
