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Production Innovation > Sustainable Innovation > Flashcards

Sustainable Innovation Flashcards

1
Q

Define sustainable development

A

Sustainable development aims to meet the needs of today without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

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2
Q

What pillars is sustainable development based off?

A
  • Economical
  • Social
  • Environmental
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3
Q

List future planet scenarios and explain them - getting from unsustainable to sustainable

A
  • Unsustainable planet - consumerism is high and the eco-efficiency of technology is low
  • Socio-economically sustained planet - reducing consumerism, but governments don’t like this as GDP will fall and cause recession
  • Technology sustained planet - introduction of a new technology that provides a sustainable solution, but usually doesn’t last - requires finite resources
  • Sustainable planet - requires a balance between the two planet scenarios
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4
Q

Define innovation

A

The successful exploitation and commercialisation of new ideas - an invention is only the idea and might not make any money - not an innovation

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5
Q

What are the 3 things needed for innovation?

A
  1. Theoretical conception
  2. Technical invention
  3. Commerical exploitation
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6
Q

What are the ingredients of a successful product/ system innovation?

A
  • System compatibility (cats eyes with car headlamps)
  • System standardisation (car headlamps standardised)
  • Maintain and protect advantage (patent)
  • Must meet a real need (safety demo)
  • Become the product of choice (won a competition)
  • Tipping point - right product at the right time (WW2 blackouts)
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7
Q

Define sustainable innovation (SI)

A

The creation of new market space, products and services or processes driven by social, environmental or sustainability issues.

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8
Q

How is it different from normal innovation?

A

The main drivers of SI are focused on sustainability

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9
Q

What are the drivers for sustainable innovation?

A
  1. Environmental and resource issues - climate change, pollution, resource shortages
  2. Legislation, sustainable consumption, and production policies - carbon tax, bans on single use plastic bags - could be cheaper to pay fine - needs to be enforced
  3. Competition/ consumer demand - eco labelling - how much energy products will use - can affect purchasing
  4. Social and ethical - fair-trade
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10
Q

What are the 5 steps to success in SI?

A
  1. View compliance as opportunity
  2. Making value chains sustainable
  3. Designing sustainable products and services
  4. Developing new business models
  5. Create next-practise platforms
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11
Q

Describe each level of the SI spectrum

A

Four main levels of innovation can be defined in the context of sustainable improvement

  1. Product incremental - improvements to existing products and services
  2. Product radical - New products and services - often disruptive - eliminates the existing way
  3. Business
  4. System
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12
Q

Sustainable innovation may occur at the product,
business or system level. For a consumer goods
manufacturer of washing machines explain what each of
these three might look like in terms of potential new
innovative products and/or services, referencing any
useful tools, methods or theories that could be used.

A
  • Product - incremental improvements to existing products or services using LCA e.g. energy efficiency improvements to a washing machine. Radical improvements to existing products/ services e.g. low temperature washing/ no water dry washing
  • Business - Organisational change to deliver new product/ service e.g. pay per use model using PSS approach for the washing machine
  • System - Changing society infrastructure to become more sustainable e.g. integrating cleaning services in new buildings or infrastructure - CE???
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13
Q

What are some features of a more sustainable product?

A
  • Uses less resources in its manufacture or use
  • Uses renewable resources
  • Lasts longer - can be recycled, repaired or reused
    • Companies deliberately don’t make their products last forever
    • Tends to be more expensive to repair than buy new one
    • Resist repair, but like recycling can be used for new products
    • Cars are an exception, but only because the companies control the repairs
  • Causes less damage to the environment - less carbon emissions
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14
Q

Why are these features mostly environmental?

A

Carbon emissions are quantifiable meaning they can be measured and fines, polices and legislations can be implemented

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15
Q

Types of product level SI and explain why one might be more favourable than the other?

A
  • Incremental
  • Radical
  • Companies prefer an incremental approach when driving SPI as established companies may disrupt their business strategy by employing radical changes
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16
Q

Define life cycle thinking?

A

A product and consumption strategy that addresses a product’s environmental, social, and economic impacts at all stages in the product life cycle such as:

  • Raw material extraction
  • Manufacturing
  • Use
  • Disposal
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17
Q

Explain what an LCA is and what it aims to do

A
  • An objective process that evaluates environmental burdens associated with a product, process, or activity
  • It identifies and quantifies energy and materials used and waste produced
  • Evaluates and implements opportunities for environmental improvements
18
Q

What are the stages/ phases of an LCA?

A
  1. Define goal and scope
  2. Life cycle inventory analysis - quantifies raw material extraction, emissions, waste production etc.*
  3. Life cycle impact assessment - Midpoints identify quantifiable measures of their impact e.g. global warming impact measured in tons of CO2 produced. Endpoints then determine the importance of these impacts - subjective as they are affected by other things - global warming can affect human health but so do other factors
  4. Life cycle interpretation

LCA is an iterative process and may involve going back and forth between stages to implement new information

19
Q

Explain the functional unit in the context of LCA

A
  • LCA considers the function of the product and this is quanitified through a functional unit. This assigns numerical values to what it does, for how long, what consumables are involved, and how many are needed
  • The LCA is limited by being unable to compare two things with different functions even though they may share the same materials
20
Q

Explain LCA Impact Damage Framework

A
  • Split into 3 categories
    • Environmental interventions - found in LC inventory analysis
    • Impact categories - 1st stage of LC impact assessment
    • Damage categories - 2nd stage of LC impact assessment (need to specify the words from that question - do not write 2nd stage…)
21
Q

Describe the generic manufacturing business model

A

It’s a cyclic process of identifying who the customer is, what they value, how you will create value, and how you make money from this. These are constantly checked throughout the innovation process

22
Q

What are the attributes of a sustainable business model?

A
  • Incorporates all the fundamental aspects from the generic model
  • Focuses on life cycle resource minimisation
  • Closed loop (reusing products or recycling)
  • Multi functional products (combines features from multiple products)
  • Distributed manufacture (closer to market, easier to distribute, bespoke to specific markets)
  • Avoids split incentives such as built in redundancy
23
Q

Define PSS

A

Business still owns the product, disposes of it, manufactures it, but charges consumers a fee to use it

24
Q

How is PSS different from the traditional approach?

A
  • The traditional approach involves consumers buying and owning the product with businesses just making and selling the product
  • PSS allows companies to maintain ownership of the product and charges consumers to use it
25
Q

What are the advantages of PSS?

A
  • Ongoing, sustained relationship with consumers - able to innovate faster knowing what customers want
  • makes the product more robust so the company can charge the service for longer - more sustainable
  • intial cost is less for the consumer and they receive a product that lasts longer
26
Q

What are the 3 categories of PSS?

A
  1. Product oriented 1-2
    1. Mainly geared towards sales of products, but some additional services are added e.g. car, computer
  2. Use oriented 3-5
    1. Product is still the central focus, but remains property of the company; not sold, made available to the customer e.g. leased car, laundrette
  3. Results oriented 6-8
    1. Client and provider agree on a result and there is no pre-determined product involved e.g. dry cleaner, postal service
27
Q

How could a make and sell product be redesigned for a PSS? Give an example for each category

A
  1. Product oriented - Selling fridges with a range of additional services, such as subscription maintenance - promotes upkeep and not getting a new one
  2. Use oriented - Leasing the fridge, pay per month service, may come with maintainence - payment is for using the product
  3. Results oriented - The service installs, maintains, and eventually upgrades a fridge. The customer doesn’t care what fridge it is - only that it produces the result they want - this incentivises the company to make it as efficient as possible to make more profit
28
Q

What is a product innovator?

A

Expands upon the capabilities of the existing product - diversifies the product so it becomes more customer centric - finds new ways to deliver value thats more convenient to the consumer

29
Q

What is a value added enabler?

A
  • Leverages existing skills and utility to provide additional services like monitoring the existing product and providing those figures to the consumer
  • Doesn’t change the product, enhances customer experience and engagement with the existing product with the aim of reducing energy costs
30
Q

Define Sharing Economy

A

An economic model involving the peer-to-peer based activity of acquiring, providing or sharing access to goods and services that facilitated by a community based on online platform

31
Q

What are some types/ generic examples of sharing economy?

A
  • Peer-to-peer lending
  • Crowdfunding
  • Ridesharing
  • Coworking - shared office space
32
Q

What are the advantages and disadvantages of sharing economy?

A

Advantages

  • Reduces need to purchase more assets
  • Existing assets can be repurposed to provide value
  • Cheaper goods and services

Disadvantages

  • Safety concerns
  • Fewer guarantees
  • Trust issues
33
Q

What are some future goals of sharing economy?

A
  • More flexibility in work and life
  • More ways to earn and save money
  • More adaptable businesses
34
Q

Define SI system level

A

A set of actions that shift a system (city, sector, economy, or even country) onto a more sustainable path

35
Q

Why do we need SI system level?

A
  • Global solutions to global problems like climate change
  • Many major systems are under stress due to food, water, and housing shortages
  • The whole system needs to be sustainable
  • Some products can’t be implemented without system changes e.g. EV with charging stations
  • Many of the biggest polluting products are part of a larger overarching system
36
Q

What are the key stages of SI system level?

A
  1. Need for change (identify the problem)
  2. Diagnose the system (understand what can change about the system and how it can be improved)
  3. Create a product/ practise that solves the problem and provides the improvement
  4. Enabling the tipping point (providing evidence, examples, demonstrations of its superiority to stimulate uptake)
  5. Sustain the transition
  6. Set the rules of the new mainstream (implement leglislation and standards to regulate the system change and ensure its success)
37
Q

Give an example of a system level change that goes through these key stages

A

cats eyes

38
Q

Why might systems not want to change?

A
  • May have huge investments in current less sustainable products/ systems
  • Market leaders in the old system
  • Adopting a new system may disrupt their lead and market dominance
39
Q

Define circular economy

A
  • The value of products, materials, and resources is maintained in the economy for as long as possible
  • the generation of waste is minimised
  • resources are kept within the economy when a product has reached the end of its life, to be used again and again to create further value
40
Q

At what stage of SI system level is circular economy at and what makes it unique in this model?

A

CE is at the stage of still creating the pioneering practises, but already has rules set (BS 8001) even though it hasn’t been established yet

41
Q

What are some challenges of CE?

A
  • All circular economies require cheap green energy input and a lot of it; they aren’t perfect closed loop systems and so experience losses which are inefficient for fossil fuel based circular economies - require unlimited renewable energy
  • Current guidance is inadequate and over generalised
  • Current economic models aren’t compatible
  • Business models favour linear systems
  • Consumers want to retain ownership
  • Not enough pioneering practices/ demonstrations
  • Reliance on fossil fuels
  • Requires redesign of products to become reusable

Production Innovation (10 decks)

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