Sustainability, and NPD strategies to benefit from demand for sustainable products

About this Webinar

Customers, competitors, legislators – all may be calling for environmental or sustainability improvement from your organisation. For most organisations the ability to influence overall sustainability performance is largely fixed in product development, no different to many other aspects of business performance. Yet product developers are unlikely to have environmental training, experience nor tools. As with many business trends the pioneers are already out there, some with painful lessons. For the rest of us the risk of ‘greenwashing’ – the term used by environmentalists to describe situations where environmental improvements are advertised but later analysed to be much worse than predicted – can be a significant halt to progress. Why risk attracting eco-warrior criticism when new product development is already fraught with the risk of commercial failure? Yet the thought remains and niggles – that competitors may be gaining an advantage in learning about dealing with an issue that is unlikely to go away.

This presentation emphasises the key role for innovation in moving the sustainability issue from one that is often being dealt with by adding cost, to one which aligns itself to the goals of the organisation. After all, isn’t a large part of the industrial revolution learning how to make more product with less material and less labour and less energy? Current tools and processes used in product development are the best starting place for improving sustainability. Understanding product life cycle impacts, prioritising targets, and improving life cycle thinking are the primary enhancements needed to product development. Starting from what we know about, it is possible to become ever more sustainable using an incremental innovation approach; though the future shape of product development may be radically different in its approach to resources, to customers and suppliers.

Webinar Leader

Prof. Steve Evans Professor Cranfield University UK

Steve Evans is Professor of Life Cycle Engineering at Cranfield University. Originally from the aerospace sector with Marconi, Plessey, and finally Martin-Baker, focused on ejection seats, Steve joined Cranfield in 1988 and has worked in many sectors and companies to help improve design performance. Steve is a regular contributor to Pure Insight, and is a firm believer in common sense (if only it was more common!)

Session Outline

1. What is sustainability - the ‘triple bottom line’ of economic, environmental and social sustainability?

2. Why are companies approaching sustainability – what causes them to act?

3. The difference between an ‘adding cost’ approach and a ‘win-win’ approach.

4. What are other companies doing – from incremental to radical to disruptive stories and products.

5. How to design for all the life cycle stages (sell-use-dispose).

6. The critical role of innovation on the journey toward sustainability.

7. What changes might I make to my new product development process?

8. ‘Designing’ business models and involving other actors in product development.

9. The critical role for product developers in any sustainability strategy.

Key Insights

In this session Steve will:

• Address the economics of sustainability
• Describe the main forces bringing sustainability into company agendas
• Explain the reactive and proactive strategies commonly used by companies to address sustainability
• Position product development as central to any organisations sustainability strategy
• Describe a variety of strategies being used and tested by the pioneers
• Provide examples that explain the potential for a sustainability oriented strategy within product development
• Explain how to reduce the environmental complexity to a few key goals
• Explain how some companies have changed product development to take advantage of these opportunities
• Introduce some ‘bleading edge’ strategies as examples of possible future trends in sustainable product development

And by attending you will learn how to:

• Assess the threat and the opportunity that a move to sustainability can bring to the organisation and to the product development process
• Incorporate sustainability into your new product development activity and keep one step ahead of the competition
• Use your existing tools and new product development processes to improve sustainability performance of the company
• Use existing tools, processes and knowledge to improve products in incremental, radical and disruptive ways
  

Who should attend?

VP’s, directors and managers of: Product Development, Service and Customer Innovation, Corporate Growth, Finance, Innovation, Marketing, New Business Development, and R&D, with an interest in or responsibility for incorporating sustainability into the NPD platform.

Technical Requirements

An Internet connection with a browser is required for the visual presentation. For the audio component, a separate phone line is required (toll-free numbers are made available for most countries).

You will receive dialing and WebEx instructions via email prior to the Online Seminar taking place.