Sustainability in Innovation

The term ‘sustainability’ is often heard when companies describe their overall innovation and business goal. Those who fully integrate this trait are gaining both monetary and brand reputation benefits. Where sustainability is generally described as “the capacity to endure”, for innovation it stretches beyond having a long-term maintenance of environmental, economic and social responsibility. Amid a continuously growing population with rising customer expectations, Government regulations and employee demands, businesses are being driven to make huge changes in not only their products, services and processes, but in how their innovation is organised and managed. But with the numerous trends, tips and hints which are being recommended from numerous sources, how can sustainability be embraced in a viable way for your company?

At the ISPIM conference last year, held in the beautiful city of Hamburg, I had the pleasure of listening to a number of keynote and luminary speakers who shared their professional experience on sustainability in innovation. In conjunction to this, academics from 49 different countries gave 200 presentations which shared their latest topical discovers and sparked lively discussions. Below is a collection of best practice take-aways insights which aim to provide ‘food for thought’ to those who are professionally tasked with making their innovation efforts sustainable. 

• Today’s growth paths are not sustainable – if our consumption trends continue, we will need two Earths to provide us with enough resources to survive.
• A clear message with clear principles is needed from the CEO; grow bottom-up, leverage collaboration and bridge isolated idea management systems.
• Roadmaps link the future to the present and can act as sustainable production models for short, medium and long term.
• Strengthen the organisation at the core by building cross-functional teams and developing talent pools - “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
• Digital transformation, sustainability and mass collaboration are three mega trends which business needs to embrace to survive.
• Utilise Crowdsourcing and your internal network of knowledge – tools such as Wisdom of the Crowd and gathering collective intelligence are only going to grow in popularity.
• ‘Value tracking’ is an objective method which can be used to measure sustainability.
• To avoid the pitfalls of innovation, focus your efforts on the following six ‘P’s:

1. Purpose – external innovation focus is essential, you must have a balanced portfolio.
2. Process – makes both the academic and economic case.
3. People – relationship management should be the core focus.
4. Partners – if your business models match, look to form collaborations.
5. Performance – use the Want-Find-Get-Manage model, the value of Open Innovation projects is greater than internal projects.
6. Passion – fusion fuels innovation and can be generated through awards and recognition.

Next week, ISPIM are hosting another exciting conference in the stunning destination of Barcelona, where industry experts and researchers will be sharing their knowledge and experience on innovation in practice (http://conference.ispim.org/). It should be another engaging and highly enjoyable three days…see you there.