**Author details**

right actions in the FE can tackle various barriers. Performing an early financial and envi‐ ronmental analysis can, for example, make the benefits clear. One of other the barriers is lack of understanding of sustainability and sustainable design tools. To tackle this in an ear‐ ly stage, the intelligence level on those domains can to be increased by proper education and

In the FE stage, the degrees of freedom and influences on the project outcome are high, while little information is available and the cost of changes is low, as shown in Figure x. At later stages in the process one has more information available, but then the cost of change will increase. It is under these conditions that the front-end team needs to make decisions. That's why dealing with sustainability in the front-end of a product innovation process is often called 'wicked'; multidimensional with a complex interdependency. One promising method to deal with this 'wicked aspects' is 'front-loading'. Front-loading is defined as "a strategy that seeks to improve development performance by shifting the identification and solving of problems to earlier phases of a product development process" [49]. By spending more energy in the front phase on environmental analysis and strategic design one gets

Successful sustainable design requires both strategic (front-end) and operational (new prod‐ uct development) activities [50]. This perspective highlights the importance of including sustainability aspects already into the front-end activities of the innovation process in order for them to be considered at a strategic level [41]. The operational level is all about eco-effi‐ ciency or doing the things right, while the strategic level focuses on eco-efficiency or doing the right thing. Unfortunately, O'Hare [33] has noted that there is a lack of tools to support the early activities of eco-design in general. The majority of sustainability tools take the ex‐ isting solution as a starting point, rather than considering the problem at a higher system level. They are generally intended for use after the strategic and conceptual design phase and cannot support the full range of challenges that are likely to be encountered during the

The study in this paper is part of a larger research at Delft University of Technology that is focusing on front-end sustainable product innovation. New research studies are planned to answer the question on how to best integrate sustainability in the front end. The insights

The author would like to acknowledge the Howest Industrial Design Center in Belgium for their financial support for this research, and the Design for Sustainability research group at

provide by this book chapter will serve as the basis for future research.

more information while the influence is high and the cost of change is low.

by providing relevant and reliable information.

**5.6. Doing the right thing vs. doing things right**

**5.5. Front-loading**

162 Advances in Industrial Design Engineering

front-end stage.

**Acknowledgements**

Kristel Dewulf1,2,3

Address all correspondence to: kristel.dewulf@howest.be

1 Howest Industrial Design Center, Kortrijk, Belgium

2 Delft University of Technology (TUDelft), Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Sec‐ tion Design for Sustainability, Delft, CE Delft, The Netherlands

3 Ghent University (UGent), Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Depart‐ ment Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Research Group Corporate Social Re‐ sponsibility, Ghent, Belgium
