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Sustainability in InnovationVivek Varma

UltimoSoft, 2860 Zanker Rd Suite 203, San Jose, CA 95134

vivek@ultimosoft.com

AbstractSustainability in innovation is being increasingly recognized as an important

consideration in the current efforts focused on balancing the needs for improved goods

and services for the current and future generations with the concomitant impact on the

natural resources. This paper analyzes the issues surrounding sustainability debate based

on a review of rich literature available. It recognizes ecological, economic and social

dimensions of sustainability and other important factors like equity, basic needs, public

participation, complexity, uncertainty and irreversibility; and, incorporates them all in a

systems based decision making framework. It also outlines an approach utilizing the

concepts of intra- and inter-generational equity that could be utilized to determine

sustainability of goods and services generated through innovative efforts. The proposed

approach is expected to facilitate better informed decision making.

1. INTRODUCTIONSustainability has been receiving increasingly more attention, particularly after the publication of

Brundtland Commissions report Our Common Future [1], and Agenda 21 of the United Nations

Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Sustainable development

or sustainability has now grown from being a movement focused on environmental concerns to a

widely accepted framework that guides the decision making of individuals, corporations, society and

governments to balance the concerns of ecological, economic, and social needs of the current and future

generations. While the role of innovation (e.g., new/improved products, services or technologies) has

been recognized in making the society sustainable, few efforts have been made to provide a framework

to systematically examine innovations sustainability in long run.Some efforts have been made to address the environmental concerns at the corporate level, for

example, based on carbon footprint, green house gas emissions or corporate water gauge etc.

Considerable efforts have also been made to define and refine the criteria and indicators of

sustainability which are useful for monitoring and reporting progress towards sustainability at different

scales. Yet a robust decision making framework integrating all the important factors that evolve from

ecological, economic and social considerations is not available. At the same time, numerous efforts to

promote sustainability over years have led to various concepts like sustainable communities,

sustainable livelihoods, sustainable cities, sustainable enterprise which often leads to confusion and

provides only a limited view of much bigger problem. This paper therefore has following goals:

1. To define and analyze important considerations affecting sustainability.

2. To develop a decision making framework to systematically examine sustainability in innovations.

2. SUSTAINABILITY: BASIC ELEMENTS2.1 A Definitional ApproachThe notion of sustainability was first recognized as an important tenet of the scientific natural resource

management in early eighteenth century. In 1785 A.D., George Ludwig Hartig, a senior Prussian

forester, suggested [2] that woodlands must be used in such a way that later generations will be able

to derive at least as much benefit from them as the present generation claims for itself.The concept of

sustainability in its present form, however, seems to have evolved largely in response to the publication

of Brundtland Commissions report on sustainable development [1], and numerous international

initiatives that followed it. These events definitively defined the role of natural resources in a broader

context of environment-development debate, and focused the attention of scientific community on

finding ways to define and operationalize sustainability [3, 4].

Though there is a lack of universally acceptable definition of sustainability, it generally follows

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