**Sustainability**

**Chapter 7**

**Sustainable Product Innovation: The Importance of**

With an overpopulated planet, hungry for electricity and resources, sustainability will be one of the biggest challenges in the future. Present production and consumption patterns are causing serious environmental and human problems and cannot be sustained in a world with rising human aspirations. The challenges and opportunities for sustainable innovation are immense, and the time horizon is shrinking. Going green isn't just about saving the planet; it's about finding a dynamic equilibrium between human and natural systems, be‐ tween saving the environment, making profit and enhancing all stakeholders' quality of life. Companies, designers and engineers can play an important role in this transition process to‐

The very early phase in the product innovation process, the so-called front-end of innova‐ tion (FEI), is the stage of the innovation process where product strategy formulation, oppor‐ tunity identification, idea generation, idea selection and concept development take place and decisions about new product development are taken [1]. These first phases in the engi‐ neering design process have the largest impact on the end result of the project [1, 2] and the highest payback to one's investments [1]. Accordingly, the front-end of innovation is often described as being the root of success for any company hoping to compete on the basis of

Notwithstanding the logic behind integrating sustainability in the early stages of an innova‐ tion process, in practice it is flawed. Front-end innovation is a hot research topic, but there is

This chapter addresses the existing knowledge in the field of sustainable product innovation and its relation to the front-end of new product development. The research in this chapter

reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Dewulf; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

© 2013 Dewulf; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Dewulf; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

wards a sustainable and smarter society with an improved 'quality of life'.

still little research done on its relationship to design for sustainability.

**the Front-End Stage in the Innovation Process**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Kristel Dewulf

**1. Introduction**

innovation [2].

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/52461
