Innovative products and services for sustainable societal development: Current reality, future potential and challenges
Introduction
Sustainable development is a broad field that needs innovation. The challenges facing societies in seeking to make sustainable development a reality are complex and no single innovation will be sufficient for societies to make the necessary transitions to equitable, sustainable, liveable post-fossil carbon societies. Societies require a wide diversity of innovations make real progress. Therefore, multi-disciplinary thinking, co-operation, research and practice are needed. The best way to ‘solve’ the complex challenges presented by climate changes and numerous other problems is to search for, test, adapt and ensure widespread implementation of truly effective, innovative solutions in a multi-disciplinary manner. It is essential to break away from the old, stagnant ways of thinking to create sustainable and equitable solutions. The objectives of this special volume (SV) of the Journal of Cleaner Production (JCLP) were based on this common-sense reasoning. The SV has the following themes: 1) Sustainable Energy Innovations, Green Products and Services; 2) Open Innovation and Collaboration for Sustainable Social Development; 3) Sustainable Operations and Supply Chain Management; 4) Remanufacturing and Networked Manufacturing; and 5) Knowledge Management for Sustainable Societal Development. Theme 1 Sustainable Energy Innovations, Green Products and Services was clearly the most popular theme in the SV with most submissions and papers in the SV. In the following sections the objectives of the SV and the content of the articles in the five themes are reviewed.
The first objective of the SV was to explore new innovations and their management in several thematic areas, which in different ways can contribute to sustainable societal development. The second objective of the SV was to explore holistic and innovative ways to combine advancements in different fields, and to develop overarching sustainable solutions. To meet these objectives, several thematic areas were addressed. The themes cover products and services as well as their production, operations, and supply chains. Parallel to these themes, Innovation management, Knowledge management and Information and Service technology were presented and reviewed. These themes cover tangible and intangible elements that are needed to develop, test and implement sustainable solutions. These themes are introduced and the findings presented in the articles are highlighted and contextualized.
Section snippets
Sustainable energy innovations, green products and services
Guest editor: Peura, Pekka
Sustainable energy (SE) has become one of the key approaches for reforming the energy sector in the EU and worldwide to accelerate the transition to equitable, sustainable, post-fossil carbon societies. As the production of energy has caused and is causing major impacts on the environment, “Renewable energy is one of the most efficient ways to achieve sustainable development” (Goldemberg, 2007), and “One of the main tasks in this century (…) will be to manage a
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the International Conference on Innovation and Management (ICIM) partner universities (Tilburg University, Wuhan University of Technology, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, PUC–São Paulo University, Yamaguchi University and University of Vaasa) as well as the ICIM2014 organizing team at the University of Vaasa. The ICIM2014 held at University of Vaasa in November 2014 initiated the idea for this SV. We would like to thank Elsevier and Dr. Donald Huisingh and Dr.
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