SPIRIT – Sustainable Product Innovation for Rewarding Transformation

According to the United Nations, humanity is in the decisive decade for transitioning society to sustainability. The business sector’s power of change and especially the leveraging potential of product development must be utilized wisely for this to succeed. Extensive and fast transformation is required in product developing companies. Developing the products that will be increasingly in demand in society’s sustainability transition is a complex task but also implies new major business opportunities.

Projektinformation

Finansiär: KK-stiftelsenStatus: PågåendeForskningsområde: Strategisk hållbar utvecklingProjektbudget: 36 mnkrProjektstart: 2024-10-01Projektslut: 2027-10-01Projektpartner: Bertegruppen AB, Dynapac Compaction Equipment AB, GKN Aerospace, Northvolt AB, Wallenius Water Innovation AB

The purpose of this project is to increase companies’ capabilities for developing competitive products that contribute to a sustainable society. Specifically, companies need know-how and methodological supports, e.g., methods and tools, to: (i) anticipate, understand, and manage sustainability-driven changes in stakeholder preferences and market conditions; (ii) assess product sustainability performance; and for this (iii) facilitate effective development work in multidisciplinary teams and decision making at different levels in the company and its value chain.

To avoid developing suboptimal solutions, comprehensive consideration of ecological and socio-economic aspects in a systemic, systematic and strategic way is needed. Such a holistic sustainability perspective is therefore a foundation for this project. Integrating it in the early phases of the product development process is in focus since this is where the lifecycle sustainability performance of products is largely determined. The core question, anchored among companies as well as in research, is: ‘How can companies accelerate their transformation to Sustainable Product Development (SPD), with a focus on the early phases of the development process?’

Many companies wish to transform to SPD faster but lack sufficient know-how and methodological supports to do so. Particular problems underpinning the insufficient level of implementation are that many SPDsupports are not designed to function coherently together and that their oftentimes low level of digitalization hampers their integration into today’s highly digitalized development environments. SPD-supports that are based on a common conceptual sustainability foundation, as well as improved digitalization, can address these problems.

Based on the above, three subprojects (SPs) will address different but interrelated aspects of the core question. SP1 focuses on Business Opportunities and Risks in Society’s Sustainability Transition. SP2 focuses on Assessing Product Sustainability Performance. SP3 focuses on User-Centered and Visualization-Based Digitalization of SPD Tools. Results from these are compiled and integrated through the core project into the project’s aggregated outcomes: (i) a set of conceptually coherent and digitalized methodological supports for early phases SPD work; (ii) best practice demonstrators of co-use of the SPD-supports, and (iii) training modules aiding effective implementation of the SPD supports.