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Exploring the need for more radical sustainable innovation: what does it look like and why?

This paper explores radical innovation in organisational culture, operations and outputs at different scales (products, services, systems). The dominant view of design as a product scale intervention is expanded to view design opportunities at multiple levels and contexts within organisations where decisions inform innovative responses to sustainability. This paper links sustainable design and innovation literatures and dialogue-based research to develop a new approach to innovation for sustainability. The work was undertaken as part of an EPSRC funded project [GR/S90645/02] Design Dialogues: An Exploratory Study of Design Narratives, Methodologies and Tools for Factor 10 Outcomes, with Dewberry as principal investigator. A sustainable innovation approach was produced as a result of interviews with sustainability experts and a number of sustainable oriented organisations. Elements of the approach were trialled with a Government funded design agency supporting SMEs and with a large multinational steel producer. This innovation for sustainability approach unpacks the potential for longer‐term organisational innovation (compared to traditional ecodesign strategies) through making explicit the intrinsic connections between natural and human capitals. The paper describes the structure of the innovation for Sustainability approach in terms of processes impacting organisational Culture and Operations (SuCO). This paper explains the need to think differently in order to create sustainability through innovation. It adds to existing design strategies solely focused on environmental improvements through describing the organisational potential for innovation at multi-scales. It outlines a series of process steps for prioritising innovation opportunities. The project was chosen to represent EPSRC’s investment in ‘People in Systems’ research portfolio at an exhibition of work in 2009. The International panel reviewing the impact of design research singled out the Design Dialogues project as “a particular highlight in terms of creativity”, (PinS Report, EPSRC, 2009, p13).