The development of Sustainable Service Systems requires innovative ideas, the involvement of new stakeholders and changes to innovation processes. Traditionally, innovation has been equated to 'high risk', and many organisations have been reluctant to devote precious resources to developing innovative new products, processes or services. The recent introduction of systematic innovation methods into sustainable design looks set to change this picture. Central to these new methods is the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, TRIZ. An evolved version of TRIZ has been developed into a generic systematic innovation schema, and has been validated through a broad range of industry problems (Mann, 2000). This process was recently applied to an eco-innovation product case study (Jones et al., 2001) and found to speed up 'harm reduction' in the product.

This paper will apply the TRIZ-based systematic innovation process to three exemplar 3S case studies. The cases will cover the three types of Sustainable Service Systems as defined by Hockerts (1999):

• application of TRIZ trend prediction tools to identify future sustainable product services. In this study, we examine how the TRIZ predicted trends of evolution can be deployed not only in their traditional role as predictors of technological system evolution, but also in predicting the evolution of markets and the supply chain required to service those markets. The paper examines how these three elements integrate and ultimately inevitably conflict, and then goes on to demonstrate how contradiction-eliminating TRIZ principles may be deployed to resolve the conflict issues.
• derivation of novel use services for high value, high use-intensity consumer products. Here we examine the often conflicting drivers between customer 'perceived value' and the 'costs' and 'harms' contained within any given service and demonstrate that although 'sustainability' and 'perceived value' are usually in contradiction, there are opportunities for paradigm-breaking resolutions.
• the development of a result service: a novel 100kW turbo-generator and associated business models for use in local CHP district heating schemes, examining the through-life design considerations around which the base generator design concept has been assembled, and their resultant impact on lease/rent/ownership paradigms. We demonstrate the importance of 'design for 3S' as a basic foundation for this type of product, relative to the more common '3S as an after-the-event add-on' approach.

References

Mann, D., (2000) 'Towards a Generic Systematic Problem Solving and Innovative Design Methodology', paper presented at 12th DETC Conference, ASME, Maryland.

Jones, E., Mann, D., Harrison, D., and Stanton, N. A., (2001) 'An Eco-innovation Case Study of Domestic Dishwashing through the application of TRIZ tools', submitted to Creativity and Innovation Management, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, UK.

Hockerts, K. (1999), 'Eco-efficient service innovation: increasing business - ecological efficiency of products and services', in Charter, M., Greener Marketing: a global perspective on greener marketing practice, Greenleaf Publishing: Sheffield, UK, pp. 95-108.

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Last updated: 13 November, 2008