Ecoinnovation moving beyond environmental technology

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Eco-innovation moving beyond environmental
technology

• Nordic Innovation Workshop
• 29 March 2006
• Fred Steward

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Director Prof Fred Steward 2002-2006 20
universities www.sustainabletechnologies.ac.uk
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Programme Objective

• To identify explain the social and economic
  forces that shape, foster or inhibit sustainable
  technologies

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Environmental Technology

• A relative not an absolute concept
• Innovation aimed at reducing
• energy consumption
• materials usage
• pollution

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The specialness of eco-innovation

• DiscontinuityCrucial importance for global
  competitiveness of disruptive, radical innovation
• DecouplingCritical need for global
  sustainability to decouple economic growth from
  environmental degradation
• Distributedness
• Systemic change in production consumption

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From incremental to radical

• Incremental
• End-of-Pipe existing products processes -
  add-ons and post-hoc modifications
• Eco-Design design within existing
  technological frame but attempt to balance
  environmental impacts
• Radical
• Clean Technology radical re-designing
  re-thinking of solutions
• New product-service systems
• Innovation in consumption production

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Factors and actors

• Limits of traditional determinant factors
  approach (context)
• Need for more emphasis on strategic capabilities
  (business actors themselves)

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Factors influencing environmental innovation
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Strategic choices

• Reactive
• response to regulation, customers,crisis,competiti
  on
• Anticipatory
• expected regulation
• Proactive
• move into new markets
• moral strategy

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European Radical Ecoinnovators
Biodegradeable pyrethroid insecticides 20 of
global market
Wind turbines 36 global market
Aquabase water based paints Global leader
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Business organisation - strategy competence

• Choice of ecosustainability as goal
• Anticipatory not reactive
• Differentiation rather than cost leadership
• Disruptive discontinuous losers as well as
  winners
• Relational capabilities coupling technology and
  market

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Challenge

• Innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities of
  business organisations need to be developed and
  oriented to ecoinnovation
• Learning networks communities of practice need
  serious new initiatives
• Different network building strategies

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Network types

• The knowledge/customer network type with strong
  linkages into the research-base was commonest in
  the UK set of cases
• the regulator/supplier network type highlighting
  linkages to the regulatory and public domain was
  commonest in the German set of cases.

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Opportunity compliance

• The knowledge/customer type of network prominent
  among the UK cases was associated with an
  opportunity led form of environmental
  innovation.
• The regulator/supplier type of network prominent
  among the German cases was associated with a
  compliance led form of environmental
  innovation.

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Knowledge/customer network
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Supplier/Regulator network
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Current European context

• Need to resolve conflict between competitiveness
  (Lisbon) sustainability (Gothenburg) agendas
• Investment in technology appropriate
  regulations, important but not the whole story
• New focus on business and entrepreneurship
  capabilities for eco-innovation (Green papers on
  innovation entrepreneurship)