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The sustainable implementation of demand-side management (DSM) for district heating and cooling (DHC) is often limited because of DHC's complexity and the requirements to involved stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to define the design principles of an organizational system for implementing economically sustainable DSM innovations in DHC. A design science approach is used to qualitatively analyze a real-life DSM implementation and decontextualize the organizational design toward more widely applicable principles. Combining empirical material gathered from ten interviews, document analysis and six months of participant observations with recent theoretical development on innovation ecosystems, we formulate a conceptual process framework that can facilitate the development and operation of an economically sustainable DSM solution. The process framework features five interlinked design principles. The findings contribute to the literature on multiorganizational systems and the implementation of technological innovations in the building and energy sectors.

This paper describes a systematic literature review of how market-based instruments can influence the development of sustainable innovation. Our analysis of empirical papers published in selected peer-reviewed journals from 1992 to 2021 shows that contextual factors such as geography and industrial sector impact whether market-based instruments successfully stimulate firms to adopt sustainable innovation. Interestingly, while most of our selected papers on East Asia report positive effects of market-based instruments, about half of the papers on Europe report negative or non-significant effects. Moreover, we appear to uncover a link between the research method they use for analysis and the observed effectiveness of market-based instruments. We reflect on the limitations and bias in current methodological approaches and discuss explanations for our findings, implications for policymakers, and avenues for future research.

In recent years, 3D Concrete Printing (3DCP) has gained traction as a technological solution for reducing cement production’s hefty carbon footprint. Studies assessing the sustainability benefits of 3DCP have not included its impact on social sustainability, nor how construction firms’ implementation of this new technology has affected its success. This study applies grounded theory methods to analyze the tradeoffs between environmental, economic, and social sustainability, and how firms’ decisions impact these tradeoffs. We gather insights from 20 interviews with 3DCP pioneers in Central and Northern Europe. Our findings suggest that firms’ greatest incentive to invest in the technology is not related to the environmental benefits, but rather 3DCP’s potential to increase automation and combat the current shortage of skilled labor in the construction sector. Current government procurement rules do not reward sustainability benefits sufficiently to encourage the uptake of 3DCP. Based on our findings, we identify five strategic decisions that companies make which affect 3DCP’s sustainability, and discuss opportunities for government to foster the adoption of this technology.

The intensification of industrial activity within an unsustainable development paradigm caused an alarming environmental crisis intertwined with societal problems on a global scale. Sustainable design theory contains an extensive body of knowledge on how these environmental and societal issues can be addressed by rethinking industrial products, processes and, more broadly, how organizations operate in the context of a more sustainable socio-economic system. Nevertheless, evidence shows that implementing these ideas is a problematic yet under addressed aspect, resulting in a gap between abstract speculations and concrete action. In this study, we focus on this critical gap by looking at how existing theory of sustainable design is implemented in business practice. To this end, we conduct a literature review followed by interviews with twenty international experts, to uncover their knowledge related to relevant project experiences. The outcome is a framework that integrates existing sustainable design theory with important business concepts, clustering it into four literature streams:ecodesign, product service system design, sustainable business model design and collaborative ecosystem design. These streams correspond to four levels of design for sustainable innovation. The framework also encompasses a set of themes related to the implementation of sustainable design theory in business practice across the aforementioned four levels. Based on this, we outline our contributions to theory and practice, and pinpoint recommendations for academic researchers, industrial designers and business managers who want to leverage their professional position to play an active role in the transition toward sustainable development.

Closed-loop supply chain (CLSC) as one of the important configurations of the circular economy (CE) has received considerable attention in sustainability matters. It is composed of characteristics that, when identified, studied, and categorized, help not only to a better understanding of the current contributions in the literature but also lead to formulating new models. This research presents one of the first in-depth studies to investigate factors influencing CLSCs. It concerns the investigation of the models which are designed based on the game theory (GT). Therefore, the reviewed works focused on cooperation and competition among the game participants. A systematic literature review is implemented as a four-step process consisting of material collection, a descriptive analysis, category selection, and evaluation stage to review and discuss the works that focus on CLSC and use GT simultaneously. A content-based analysis is carried for the final works, which include 215 papers. The identified characteristics of these papers are classified into 12 main categories. Moreover, they are divided into subcategories to highlight the contribution of each paper. Accordingly, results are derived, and gaps are explained.

New ventures are increasingly recognized as candidates for creating novel sustainable products that challenge existing practices. Yet, succeeding in product innovation for such ventures is challenging due to various uncertainties pertaining to product development, potential demand and sustainability impact of their products. This study investigates how sustainability-oriented ventures engage in product innovation processes; in doing so, it builds upon the theory of effectuation, as a useful approach to decision-making under uncertainty. A longitudinal case study on four sustainability-oriented ventures revealed two different approaches to product innovation in such ventures, namely adaptive and exaptive approaches. While an adaptive approach is characterized by a long-term value proposition a venture engages in, and high fidelity design experiments used to get the commitment of a select number of stakeholders to develop this predefined value proposition, an exaptive approach is characterized by short-term multiple value propositions a venture engages in, and low-fidelity affordable design experiments used to test market potential of these propositions through various stakeholder interactions. Moreover, the way new ventures define their value propositions in relation to sustainability appears to influence the approach they adopt for the product innovation process. While the ambition to transform a particular market towards sustainable practices causes ventures to anchor on a target market, which appears to stimulate an adaptive approach, the ambition to develop a product that can replace existing products or provide similar sustainability benefits in a number of markets causes firms to anchor on a product idea, which appears to stimulate an exaptive approach. We conclude that future studies should explore the implications of different approaches in order to identify best practices for new ventures engaged in product innovation for sustainability.

Current environmental, social and economic sustainability challenges are increasingly becoming sources of motivation for both manufacturing and service companies when attempting to innovate their businesses. In recent years, there has been growing interest from academics, policy-makers and practitioners on service innovation as a new business logic for companies to address societal challenges regarding sustainability. Nevertheless, research specifically focusing on service innovation in relation to sustainability is scarce and ultimately scattered across different research fields. Thereby, only limited clues are available for companies willing to address sustainability challenges through service innovation. To encourage further research in this direction, this paper systematically reviewed the available literature by investigating peer-reviewed publications (from 2004 up to and including 2015) across different fields, which jointly focus on services, innovation and sustainability. The literature review confirmed both the growing amount of research on service innovation in relation to sustainability, as well as the lack of an overarching field to clearly identify such a phenomenon. The review also revealed that three main existing research streams (service innovation, product-service system and sustainability-oriented innovation) contribute to the investigation topic, though all have specific focuses when it comes to the sustainability and innovation dimensions considered. Taking stock of the descriptive and thematic analysis of the review and the identified research gaps, the paper concludes by discussing the need for a clear recognition of the emerging field of sustainability-oriented service innovation, and by outlining several future research pathways for its further enhancement.