Systematic Review - Network for Business Sustainability

In Practice
InterfaceFLOR is gradually climbing higher
up Mount Sustainability by continually
looking for incremental changes to our
products and processes. But we also look
for the miracle — the solution that will create
the radical change we need to achieve
Mission Zero. We do this by viewing our
products and processes from the top of the
mountain looking down. Rather than just
focusing on how we make what we already
have more sustainable, we ask “what would
we start with if we are trying to achieve true
sustainability?” Source: Arratia (2010: 2).
PRODUCT INNOVATION
Product innovation can be nurtured through platforms,
new knowledge sources and market opportunities.
1. Adopt a servitization strategy: supplement or
replace products with services
2. Search for product innovation ideas in new areas:
e.g. use biomimicry and engage with bottom-ofthe-pyramid
customers
3. Be attentive to disruptive and systems-changing
innovation happening elsewhere
4. Learn lessons from local firms and from new
innovation platforms such as frugal innovation
1. Adopt a servitization strategy: supplement or
replace products with services
In Operational Optimization, the product life cycle
constrains opportunities for innovation. Some firms
16 But it is not clear how successful the initiative has been
have addressed this limitation by replacing products
with services (known as servitization or product-service
strategies). By focusing on functionality, product
developers ask whether a tangible product is actually
needed or whether it can be replaced with a service.
They transition from checklist-based, green thinking
to broader sustainability thinking. Servitization is a
conceptual challenge in terms of product/service
design, sometimes requiring that consumers be reeducated,
particularly in developed economies, where
consumers have become accustomed to ownership.
Firms that have developed technological and R&D
capabilities to deliver products face a challenge: the
need to overcome the barrier their competency creates
to doing things differently.
Underlying the concept of product servitization is the
idea that human needs are fulfilled by services, not
products (Vergragt & Van Der Wel, 1998). Customer
value is based on functionality; customers buy the
service, not the product. Environmental and social
benefits accrue from a product service system (PSS),
including fewer products being manufactured, which
leads to associated reductions in resource destruction
and accumulation of waste. A PSS also makes services
available and affordable to customers for whom
owning the product is beyond their reach or for those
communities consciously deciding on a communitysharing
model of consumption.
Product service systems illustrate what Clark et al.
(2009) refer to as the essence of sustainable innovation,
which does not necessarily lead to new technologies,
but to rethinking how to meet everyone’s needs and to
Innovating for Sustainability 49