**5. Conclusions and insights on the importance of integrating sustainability in the Front End**

**Drivers Barriers**

Improvement of product and product quality Extra costs

Energy efficiency

Public pressure

stakeholders

standards…)

**Table 4.** Drivers & Barriers for Sustainable Design

Market competition / Being 'fashionable'

New market opportunities

Availability of subsidies

Industrial sector initiatives

Growing amount of knowledge

Cooperation with supply chain partners

Development of external assessments (labels,

**External** Governmental Regulations / Legislation

158 Advances in Industrial Design Engineering

The need for innovative power

Increase awareness of the public /

Growing pressure from different

**Internal** Management's sense of responsibility No clear or lack of environmental benefits

Business opportunities Lack of acquisition of tangible benefits

Risk Management Not perceived as responsibility

Long-term survival No alternative solution available

Improvement of brand image Shortage of short-term benefits

Customer needs and demands Commercial disadvantage

Environmental impact reduction Lack of acquisition of tangible benefits

Competitive advantage Lack of management's commitment

Innovational opportunities Conflict with functional product requirements

Cost reduction Lack of understanding of sustainable design tools

Lack of interest from consumers /

Consumers not willing to pay (extra) for it

Lack of market demand

High-quality up-front analysis is essential to effective and efficient product development. Various authors have pointed out the importance of the Front End of Innovation. Over de last decade, the number of publications on the Front End has increased, providing more in‐ sights on the characteristics, process, activities, functions, and patterns in the Front End. However, from a sustainable product innovation perspective, the Front End literature does not explicitly explain how sustainable design considerations can be integrated into these early stages.

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 still little research done on its relationship to design for sustainability. There are a number of tools available to guide designers, engineers and managers in the design process when the specifications of the product or service are already set. However, methods supporting target identification for sustainable innovations are rare [41].

In light of the increasing attention to sustainability, sustainable product innovation and pre‐ development activities in new product development, various authors have recently pointed out the importance of integrating sustainability in the front end [41], [42], [43], [33], [44], [31], [45].

This sections aims to give an overview of the main reasons why integrating sustainability in the front end is so important.

### **5.1. Tackling sustainability problems at higher system levels**

The international research literature on Sustainable Product Development (SPD) identifies the need to move beyond incremental change (e.g. redesign of existing products) to more fundamental, systematic changes. These are described as 'function innovation' or 'system in‐ novation' [46].

Brezet's model of 'eco-design innovation' [46] defines four types of environmental innova‐ tion, characterized by product improvement, product redesign, function innovation and sys‐ tem level innovation, according to the environmental impact reduction or eco-efficiency that can be achieved, shown in Figure 7.

The vertical axis expresses the eco-efficiency or environmental impact improvement. For ex‐ ample, factor 2 equates to half the overall environmental impact of a product, or a factor 2 performance improvement in material and energy efficiency. The horizontal axis corre‐ sponds with the time that a company or industry needs to progress through on the way to achieving environmental sustainability.

The first two stages of 'product improvement' and 'redesign product' focus on lower sys‐ tems levels and deliver small to moderate improvements in environmental sustainability. The latter stages focus on function and system innovation and deliver considerably greater system improvements in environmental performance.

Modest eco-efficiency gains can be achieved with relatively little effort in the new product development stage of an innovation process. However, to tackle problems at higher system levels, the problem needs to be already integrated in the Front End.At a later stage in the innovation process, the design space is limited and the resources allocated, as also pointed out in the previous chapters. After this crucial phase only incremental environmental im‐ provements or product redesign are possible.

**Figure 8.** The various stages of a design brief in the front end of the innovation process [48]

marketing and management team.

allocated.

hard part to deal with.

**5.4. Early tackling of barriers**

**5.3. Commitment and allocation of resources**

Sustainable design projects would be far more effective if commencing from an environmen‐ tally responsible design brief. The secret to sustainable products lays upstream in the inno‐ vation process, in a good brief providing guidance to the design, engineering, and

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Decisions made in the front-end have a significant influence on all subsequent phases of the innovation process. For example, quality, costs, and timings are mostly set during the frontend phase [18]. The final approval at the end of the FE is usually a formal go/no-go decision. It is a critical point, as it determines whether the firm will invest and if so, how much it is willing to invest. This is also the moment where the other resources, e.g. time and people are

It is also a critical point regarding fruitful opportunities towards sustainable design, as the success of the product's final sustainability, is highly dependent on the previous com‐ mitted resources. If no sufficient resources, e.g. time, budget and people with the right skills and knowledge are committed, the overall sustainability success is doomed to fail. Dewulf et al. [48] note that defining quantitative environmental targets in the early stage of an innovationproject often appears to be very difficult for innovation projects with a high innovation level. As costs and timings are mostly set during the front-end, this is a

Table 3 in Section 4.2.3 summarizes the internal and external drivers and barriers for sus‐ tainable design. A lot of those barriers have their roots in the Front-End. Performing the

**Figure 7.** The four generic levels of eco-design, after Brezet [36]

#### **5.2. Greening the design brief**

A design brief is a written description of a project that requires some form of design. It is an agreement, or contract between the parties involved in the project. Often times, it is also a point of transfer between different professionals, where the project is handed over from marketing to design, or from a product manager to an in-house design team or external de‐ sign agency. It is also a roadmap and project-tracking tool, defining the various steps that will be followed [47].

The role of a design brief is to provide the foundation to the entire design process and can be seen as the report or summary of the investigations steps and the decisions taken in the Front End, as shown in Figure 8 [48].

Sustainable Product Innovation: The Importance of the Front-End Stage in the Innovation Process http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/52461 161

**Figure 8.** The various stages of a design brief in the front end of the innovation process [48]

Sustainable design projects would be far more effective if commencing from an environmen‐ tally responsible design brief. The secret to sustainable products lays upstream in the inno‐ vation process, in a good brief providing guidance to the design, engineering, and marketing and management team.

#### **5.3. Commitment and allocation of resources**

The latter stages focus on function and system innovation and deliver considerably greater

Modest eco-efficiency gains can be achieved with relatively little effort in the new product development stage of an innovation process. However, to tackle problems at higher system levels, the problem needs to be already integrated in the Front End.At a later stage in the innovation process, the design space is limited and the resources allocated, as also pointed out in the previous chapters. After this crucial phase only incremental environmental im‐

A design brief is a written description of a project that requires some form of design. It is an agreement, or contract between the parties involved in the project. Often times, it is also a point of transfer between different professionals, where the project is handed over from marketing to design, or from a product manager to an in-house design team or external de‐ sign agency. It is also a roadmap and project-tracking tool, defining the various steps that

The role of a design brief is to provide the foundation to the entire design process and can be seen as the report or summary of the investigations steps and the decisions taken in the

system improvements in environmental performance.

provements or product redesign are possible.

160 Advances in Industrial Design Engineering

**Figure 7.** The four generic levels of eco-design, after Brezet [36]

**5.2. Greening the design brief**

Front End, as shown in Figure 8 [48].

will be followed [47].

Decisions made in the front-end have a significant influence on all subsequent phases of the innovation process. For example, quality, costs, and timings are mostly set during the frontend phase [18]. The final approval at the end of the FE is usually a formal go/no-go decision. It is a critical point, as it determines whether the firm will invest and if so, how much it is willing to invest. This is also the moment where the other resources, e.g. time and people are allocated.

It is also a critical point regarding fruitful opportunities towards sustainable design, as the success of the product's final sustainability, is highly dependent on the previous com‐ mitted resources. If no sufficient resources, e.g. time, budget and people with the right skills and knowledge are committed, the overall sustainability success is doomed to fail. Dewulf et al. [48] note that defining quantitative environmental targets in the early stage of an innovationproject often appears to be very difficult for innovation projects with a high innovation level. As costs and timings are mostly set during the front-end, this is a hard part to deal with.

#### **5.4. Early tackling of barriers**

Table 3 in Section 4.2.3 summarizes the internal and external drivers and barriers for sus‐ tainable design. A lot of those barriers have their roots in the Front-End. Performing the 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 by providing relevant and reliable information.

Delft University of Technology, in particular dr. R. Wever and Prof. dr. J.C. Brezet, for their

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2 Delft University of Technology (TUDelft), Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Sec‐

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

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**References**

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

tion Design for Sustainability, Delft, CE Delft, The Netherlands

1 Howest Industrial Design Center, Kortrijk, Belgium

**Author details**

Kristel Dewulf1,2,3

#### **5.5. Front-loading**

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

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

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 front-end stage.

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