Our business operates on the premise that innovation and sustainability are intrinsically linked fields and that the thinking from each can greatly benefit the other. They are alas both also buzzwords that are misused in many ways. So what do we mean by 'innovation', 'sustainability' and the two combined?
'Innovation' seems to be popping up everywhere at the moment and I question how genuinely innovative many propositions or concepts purporting to be so are! But it is also fair to say that innovations don't have to be big or earth-shattering. They just need to combine new thinking with successful implementation (however success has been defined). Our favoured definition of innovation actually comes from the Glossary of Electronics, the wonderfully simple:
'Innovation' seems to be popping up everywhere at the moment and I question how genuinely innovative many propositions or concepts purporting to be so are! But it is also fair to say that innovations don't have to be big or earth-shattering. They just need to combine new thinking with successful implementation (however success has been defined). Our favoured definition of innovation actually comes from the Glossary of Electronics, the wonderfully simple:
"Innovation = creative idea + implementation"
We have previously discussed the semantics around sustainability and why to an extent it doesn't matter what it is called, as long as it resonates with your stakeholders. But we still feel that 'sustainability' does the best catch-all job to describe what we do and are interested in. And we don't think anyone has described it better than the original sustainable development definition in the Brundtland report:
“Development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
Most importantly, this definition makes it clear it is not just about the environment - economic and social sustainability are just as critical going forward.
So what do you get when you combine the two? The above would suggest something around successfully implementing creative ideas that will lead to development without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. But this is quite long-winded and in attempting to come up with something snappier, we realised no one has been able to summarise the essence of it better than Einstein. So now when anyone asks us what innovation for sustainability is, we give the following one liner from the great man himself:
So what do you get when you combine the two? The above would suggest something around successfully implementing creative ideas that will lead to development without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. But this is quite long-winded and in attempting to come up with something snappier, we realised no one has been able to summarise the essence of it better than Einstein. So now when anyone asks us what innovation for sustainability is, we give the following one liner from the great man himself:
"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them"
by Jesper Ekelund
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