Sustainable Innovation and the Issues of Scale

Abstract

Sustainable innovation and eco-innovation have become priorities within the area of sustainable design. Focusing not only on production, also consumption and systemic changes have been addressed in order to handle increasingly substantial issues. Consequently, the focus of sustainable innovation has shifted from products to solutions and systems. However, as design has traditionally been a product-oriented profession, adopting operational models that require greater influence throughout the value chain is not necessarily easy. This article explores the issues that the scale of sustainable innovation poses on design and suggests that the concept of environmentally sustainable innovation should be approached more deeply also at the product level.