dc.description.abstract
This data set contains new results on how organisations can capture sustainability and manage innovation to contribute to changes in socio-technical systems characterised by greater sustainability. While drawing from sustainability transitions research can help to establish sustainability criteria that innovative organisations must meet with their sustainable innovation practices to contribute to complex and long-term sustainability, it is also essential to assess the governance and decision-making of innovative organisations within sectors in more detail. By doing so, we can identify potential adaptations that could make these organisations facilitators of sustainable transformational changes in the real world.
Research in the field of innovation management (IM) provides significant insights into the driving forces behind sustainable innovation (SI). Management studies that focus on the management of sustainable innovation draw attention to the necessary measures to align development with sustainability and the role of innovation in facilitating business transitions to sustainable practices. However, challenges emerge when it comes to linking innovation initiatives with potential risks or consequences that can emerge, e.g., by pursuing environmental, yet socially unjust, goals and providing management practices for their prevention. This is partly due to conceptual limitations and the applied methods in prevailing studies. In this light, it can be beneficial to look at the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) literature.
As there is still little research exploring conceptual integrations of the two approaches for innovation management to answer transitions-related research questions, it will be first explored in this doctoral thesis, how RRI can expand existing knowledge on the management of sustainable innovation to prevent "partially" sustainable transitions. Second, it will be investigated how RRI could facilitate novel innovation management approaches to address transitions-related research questions.
In Chapter 2, the impact of sustainability agendas in research and innovation on transitions is assessed to make conceptual extensions using the four RRI principles. A primary focus is on the concept of sustainable innovation, which provides essential features to analyse innovation processes in terms of their broader implications on socio-technical systems. However, SI falls short in addressing multidimensional sustainability, such as responsibility for potential future trade-offs or consequences of innovation. In such cases, innovation may run the risk of intervening in transitions with solutions that might be more environmentally friendly yet socially unjust. Therefore, the question is raised how innovation can be managed to contribute to creating sustainable socio-technical systems? To address this research question, answers are sought in the RRI literature, which encourages thinking about the purpose of research and innovation, the underlying goals of innovation, and the ethical, inclusive, and democratic opportunities through which these goals can be achieved. Specifically, the Chapter provides findings from a systematic literature review (SLR) of a representative sample of empirical studies from the SI and RRI literature (n=29). In the initial phase of the analysis, the SLR aims to enhance our understanding of aspects highlighted in the SI literature that enable sustainability-driven innovation processes to contribute to sustainable socio-technical system change and limitations highlighted in the same literature that may weaken the sustainable contributions. In the second part of the analysis, it is investigated how each RRI principle can support innovation processes for sustainability, either by enhancing existing strengths or minimising existing weaknesses. While findings from SI publications underscore certain strengths, such as aligning economic profit with sustainability goals, weaknesses also emerge. Specifically, profit, competitiveness and technology-centric assessments often take precedence over social sustainability. Nevertheless, the RRI publications illustrate that the RRI principles can contribute to enhancing existing strengths, e.g., by reinforcing corporate codes of conduct to enhance decision-making for social sustainability. Furthermore, RRI proves to be advantageous in addressing current challenges, e.g., by recognising sustainability-dilemmas at an early stage in order to integrate solution-finding into strategy-development. This not only contributes to the existing literature by synthesising two innovation-driven concepts in a novel form but also expands upon these requirements by providing a first critical discussion of responsible approaches in innovation processes for sustainability and useful methods to support sustainable change.
In Chapter 3, Foresight is considered an essential approach to support sustainable change with responsible approaches to innovation by enabling deliberations on complex futures. However, even though Foresight provides valuable analytical and outlook tools to address this task, Foresight-related methods need to be tailor-made and fine-tuned to accomplish it adequately. It can be argued that Foresight inherits open potentials for capturing the multidimensional nature of sustainability in innovation, i.e., by omitting broader visions and focussing more on technical elements or by superficially considering complex interrelationships for subsequent decision-making. In Chapter 3, the aim is to answer the question of how Foresight methods can be adapted to explore how innovation-driven systemic changes can contribute to greater (multidimensional) sustainability and how RRI can assist in this task? Thereupon, a responsibility-oriented Foresight approach with a Delphi method is developed and piloted in Chapter 3. Using a multi-stage Delphi survey informed by insights from the RRI literature, 52 public and private sector experts are asked to examine 15 innovation-driven future changes in the German agri-food system for which there was a shared opinion that they represent (potential) sustainable changes. For the Delphi questionnaire, RRI provides an approach to assessing (multidimensional) sustainability from a broader perspective, allowing co-existing values to sharpen the complexity of future expectations. The analysis reveals that the Delphi method can be adapted to enable reflection on unintended consequences of "seemingly-sustainable", innovation-driven future changes for multiple aspects of sustainability. This can be a beneficial addition to previous studies by providing a methodological framework for the reassessment of promising innovation for sustainable transition in light of system complexities. While consensus can be reached on the most desirable innovation-driven changes, it becomes evident that significant and interrelated risks for sustainability are associated with more and less desirable changes. Thereby, future options that are assessed to be desirable by the experts, such as the introduction of a nutrient-rich diet in school canteens and cafeterias, still face severe risks for certain dimensions of sustainability. Thereby, socio-cultural or socio-economic backgrounds define access, which can result in a social divide. Similar assessments are still rare in connection with Foresight, especially in connection with Delphi surveys. Additionally, by examining the reasons for experts’ dissent, it becomes evident that the desirability of future options for a sustainable agri-food system largely depends on the interplays with other innovations or consumption and production patterns.
While Chapter 3 offers recommendations on how Foresight processes can be employed to inform innovation-driven systemic changes and contribute to greater multidimensional sustainability from a management perspective, similar to other studies, the primary focus lies on anticipating impacts, involving a broad spectrum of stakeholders, and fostering reflexivity in research agendas. However, a notable gap remains in understanding how to ensure that the generated future knowledge is effectively responded to during subsequent decision-making and planning processes. Thereby, anticipated knowledge may not be translated into responsive strategy-development, compromising the governance of societal challenges in desirable ways. Additionally, despite awareness of potential contrasted future options, there remains a risk that future options with divergent characteristics are addressed less comprehensively in Delphi surveys, thus, effecting their implications for subsequent decision-making.
Consequently, the Delphi as a well-established methodological tool to inform subsequent decision-making and planning processes is utilised to integrate the articulation of response options for subsequent strategy-building. Specifically, in Chapter 4, the focus is on how a Delphi can inform research and innovation about responsive strategy-building to contribute to the creation of new procedures, structures, and institutional settings that promote beneficial outcomes and prevent harm? Drawing from the RRI literature to understand discrepancies between "desirability" and "probability" of future options as missed opportunities to increase social desirability ("doing good") or as threats to it ("avoiding harm"), experts (n=21) who have taken part in the previous two rounds were engaged in an additional third-round to assess three innovation-driven changes in the German agri-food sector that are characterised by desirability and probability discrepancies and their risks to sustainability. To increase alignment with the responsiveness principle, they were tasked with identifying and making potential future response options for research and innovation more explicit to help future decision-makers find or adopt strategies that promote beneficial outcomes and prevent harm to the society, environment and economy in an equitable manner.
The discussion in Chapter 4 presents a novel perspective on assessing sustainability issues from an innovation management standpoint when compared to related literature by presenting the sustainability prospects of future options in connection with their management. The results show that the Delphi method can be adapted to contribute to responsiveness in future decision-making, ultimately improving the overall sustainability prospects of certain innovation-driven future changes. However, the results also demonstrate that despite a willingness to adapt, innovative organisations can be constrained by existing operational frameworks, which limits their ability to prevent social, environmental and economic harm. Hence, a methodological framework is presented that can help researchers deal with critical questions for transformative change seriously and how this can provide valuable insights for subsequent strategy-development and planning by elucidating response options without losing sight of the systemic context within which innovative organisations operate.
The insights from Chapter 3 also inform Chapter 5 by combining it with a business modelling process. Business modelling allows for the visualisation and incorporation of existing knowledge to make strategic decisions that influence how businesses create, deliver, and capture value in the future. In Chapter 5, the goal is to gain a deeper understanding of how business model processes can be inspired to implement research behaviour that constitutes "doing good" and "avoiding harm" in the future, e.g., by elaborating on new options for partner selection or value proposition, as one opportunity to depart from business-as-usual strategies and the formation of more sustainable modes of production and consumption? Business modelling activities often lack clear insights into the practical application of business models in the future and multidimensional sustainability, with environmental and social aspects taking precedence, while other dimensions like human rights, health, or safety receive less consideration. These are just some examples why current business modelling applications run the risk of overlooking several crucial aspects required for a sustainable contribution to transition through strategic decision-making. In response to these challenges, a responsible business modelling approach is developed and piloted with a heterogeneous group of researchers and innovators from the German agri-food sector. The process includes a Value Proposition and a BMC workshop with researchers and innovators from the German agri-food sector (n=15) that utilises results from Chapter 3 in combination with additional RRI-interventions to inform three preselected business model ideas about novel food innovations. This approach represents an initial attempt to integrate future knowledge from various sources and viewpoints more closely into the value creation and delivery process of businesses in an iterative manner. The results demonstrate that the interventions can inspire new directions for doing business in the future by fostering anticipation, reflexivity and responsiveness, ultimately adding sustainability characteristics to the BMs, such as by reinforcing more sustainable linkages in network creations or mitigate risks associated with harmful ones. Additionally, it demonstrates that anticipative and reflective behaviour does not necessarily lead to responsive behaviour. Instead, not all broadly configured knowledge had an impact on the shapes of the final BMs, which extends the implications for responsible innovation approaches.
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