[Trendpaper] Connected Business as a Driver for Sustainable Innovation

mm1 Sustainability Experten beschreiben darin, wie Unternehmen durch nachhaltige Geschäftsmodell- und Produktentwicklung ihre Wertschöpfung signifikant steigern können.

Connected business and related technologies represent not only major commercial opportunities; they are also increasingly important drivers for 21st century sustainability. Connected Car, Green IT, Smart Home, Industry 4.0 or the Smart Grid can significantly reduce the environmental impact of business activities through mechanisms such as:

  • Optimization (e.g. of energy consumption, production processes or supply chain operations)
  • Substitution (e.g. virtualization of paper based billing)
  • Incentivization (e.g. of safe driving behavior via telematics based insurance tariffs)
  • Improved decision making (e.g. big data and agent based model
    informed policy making).

Companies can generate immense business benefits when pursuing sustainability. These can include

  • Reduced costs through optimized production processes
  • Increased sales through attractive product lines
  • Increased innovativeness through new focus and boundary conditions
  • Reduced risks e.g. via proactive compliance with regulations
  • Increased brand reputation and employee satisfaction

In addition, strong incentives such as regulatory and NGO pressure, increasing consumer demand for green products or rising and more volatile commodity prices continue to push sustainability up the corporate agenda.

In order to benefit from these opportunities and trends, companies need to move beyond ‘traditional’ corporate social responsibility initiatives and start pursuing deliberate sustainable business model and product innovation. This paper describes a set of powerful tools and methodologies developed by the mm1 Sustainable Innovation Practice to help its clients to achieve this goal, such as the

  • mm1 Sustainable Product Development Process
  • mm1 Sustainability Balanced Scorecard
  • mm1 Sustainability Impact Framework
  • mm1 Sustainable Business Model Canvas

In addition, a series of case studies from a large variety of industries is presented.

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