Adapting innovation tools to the eco-innovation requirements of industry: case study results

Despite the proliferation of eco-design and eco-innovation tools emerging from academia in the last 20 years, the uptake of such tools remains poor with usage limited to a few specific niche areas. In this paper, how eco-innovation tools could gain 'mainstream' popularity is considered, and it is proposed that adapting eco-innovation tools to the specific requirements of companies and their designers is the key to improve their adoption by industry. A tool adaptation and implementation process is introduced. Results from the industrial application of this process within one of six case-study companies from the electrical and electronic equipment industry are presented. The results reveal that design teams are willing and able to engage in the process of adapting eco-innovation tools to better suit their needs; that the co-development of tool evaluation metrics is a useful part of this process; and that the current understanding of designers requirements for eco-design tools may not be directly applicable in the case of eco-innovation tools.

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