Sustainable Business Innovation

• Responsible Innovation explores how to create a better future.
• A module options fair for 2025-26 will be held on Wednesday, March 5th.

Learning Outcomes

• The aim is to understand the concept of sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI).
• It will explore the dimensions of the SOI landscape.
• The text will investigate the three approaches to becoming a sustainable business.

Sustainability-oriented Innovation

• SOI involves undertaking a journey.
• To achieve sustainability, firms need to engage in continuous change.
• Ongoing change will ensure equivalence to environmental, social, and economic dimensions in decision-making.
• It promotes pursuing the triple-bottom line (Profits, People, and Planet).

Sustainability-oriented Innovation (Adams et al., 2016)

• Sustainability-oriented innovation meets social and environmental goals in addition to economic goals.
• This framework allows organizations to become more sustainable. Thereby enabling eco-innovations, green innovation, inclusive innovation, Jugaad innovation, reverse innovation, frugal innovation, sustainable innovation and responsible innovation.

The Landscape of SOI (Adams et al., 2016)

• The Landscape ranges from insular to systemic.
• It ranges from stand alone to integrated.
• From diminishing unsustainable to increasingly sustainable.
  • Context 1 features reactive, incremental, internal innovation.
  • Context 2 features embedding innovation.
  • Context 3 features systems change.

SOI (Adams et al., 2016)

• Operational optimization is about eco-efficiency.
  • It involves compliance and efficiency by doing the same things better.
  • This approach reduces harm through gradual improvements.
• Organizational transformation involves new market opportunities.
  • It is novel products, services, or business models by doing good when doing new things.
  • Creates shared value.
  • It’s relationship to the firm establishes a fundamental shift in firm purpose.
• Systems Building is societal change.
  • Novel products, services, or business models that are impossible to achieve alone (doing good by doing new things with others).
  • Creates net positive impact.
  • Extends beyond the firm to drive institutional change.

Activities of SOI (Adams et al., 2016)

• Operational optimization involves doing more with less.
  • Involves complying with regulations or pursuing efficiency gains
  • This involves a focus on internal and incremental innovation facilitated by use of tools
  • Requires exploitation of existing knowledge management capabilities to identify and access relevant knowledge
  • Compliance and recruitment of external domain experts for new knowledge
  • Exploits existing innovation capabilities
• Organizational transformation involves doing good by doing new things.
  • It means embedding sustainability as a cultural and strategic norm in a shaping logic that transcends green efforts.
  • It advocates new values and platforms/devices and new ideation practices.
  • Requires engagement with the stakeholders of the firm
  • Shifts focus from intra-firm linkages to collaborations with immediate stakeholders
  • SOI culture is embedded through the organization
• Systems Building involves doing good by doing new things with others.
  • Requires logic of wide collaborations to invest in systems to derive new propositions.
  • Collaboration and adoption of platforms with diverse stakeholders is key
  • Development of ambidextrous skills enabling shadow-tracking and learning from experimentation
  • Diagnose problems/challenges with systems.
  • Requires adoption of new business management.

Operational Optimization - Coca-Cola

• Collection and recycling every bottle/can that they sell/produce by 2030.
  • Part of broader scheme known as "World Without Waste"
  • Launched in 2018
  • The company aims to make 100% of packaging recyclable by 2025.
  • Utilise 50% recycled material in packaging by 2030
  • At least 25% of beverages sold in returnable (refillable) packaging by 2030.

Organisational Transformation - Zipcar

• Zipcar is the UK's biggest and most popular car-sharing club.
• Zipcar is a service where members join online and gain access to over 3,000 cars/vans located in roadside locations.
• They aim to improve city living by making it simpler, smarter, and greener.

Systems Building - Unilever

• Unilever is a company of brands with a clear purpose, making sustainable living commonplace.
• It aims to prove that its business model delivers superior performance.

Back to the innovation mgmt process

• It overcomes that open versus close dilemma through a process.
• Search: Find opportunities for innovation
• Select: Decide what to do and why
• Implement: Decide how to make it happen
• Capture: Decide how to get benefits from it
• Includes the use of external business development.
• Involves using Yet2.com.

Back to organisational Constraints

• Innovation Jam routine: brainstorming ideas then reviewing and refining them with the help of senior managers
• Daily routines (Dailies) at Pixar: Storyboard people and artists get daily feedback from their incubation teams
• Screening external ideas at P&G
  • technology entrepreneurs log the idea into the online "eureka catalog,".
  • they select ideas with market potential.
  • They make use of external manufacturer relationships for licensing, acquiring etc
• Routines aren't just enablers, they have a huge impact on process

Innovation management at Tesla

• Car manufacturing sector, wouldn’t it be nice to have a solution to the problems that EV's have with battery charging
• Searching
  • Make use of innovation contests
  • Make use of innovation Jams
• Possible Solutions
  • Improving Battery Life
  • Improving Electric Charging Infrastructure
• Selecting
  • Portfolio management tools, find a win-win
  • Find a way of improving the success probability
  • Tesla has very large battery capabilities compared to other market leaders such as Nissan

Continued

• Implementing
  • Search for suppliers to find new partnerships
  • Example would be Grapheneano, which have range of 500-miles per charge and re-charge from zero to 100% in under 5 minutes.
• Capture
  • Utilise patents
  • Utilise services such as Yet2.com to to out-licence
• Innovation Strategy
  • Work with partnerships to improve optimization

Urban Mobility Pathways

• Table 3 is a guide to configurations for High Social Impact (SIM) and Not-High Social Impact.
• High social impact comes from a successful sustainable orientation.
  • Tangible/Physical path: Infrastructural Path
  • Tangible/Physical path: Generic/Hybrid Path
  • Intangible/Social Paths: Innovation Path
  • Intangible/Social Paths: System Efficiency Path
• Not-High Social Impact comes from a path that is unsuccessful, in terms of sustainable orientation.