Innovation patterns for sustainability - Insights from a European Foresight Project on the Future of Innovation

Sustainability is widely expected to become a major driver of innovation activities. Many companies adopt sustainability oriented innovation strategies and innovation policy on the national and EU level is increasingly targeting sustainability as "Grand Challenge". With respect to the environmental dimension of sustainability, the notion of "eco-innovation" that is directed at products, services and processes reducing harmful impact of production and consumption on the environment is becoming highly prominent in research, policy and industry. The paper rests on the findings of an international foresight project which investigates new forms of innovation such as open innovation and social innovation and their economic, social and environmental impacts. Based on these findings we show that we do not only need green products and services but rather "transformative innovation" towards systemic change in production and consumption patterns in order to achieve the step-change in reduction of environmental impact.