Introduction
Imagine you could chose between two types of bread in a supermarket. Both would have exactly the same properties, but the price of one would be higher. Which one would you choose?
Now imagine you could chose between these breads again. But now you have the knowledge that the more expensive bread, besides having the same properties as the other, also is better for the environment. Which one would you chose in this scenario?
Research shows that people are willing to pay more for sustainable labeled products than for non-sustainable products (Vecchio & Annunziata, 2015).
The above is the outcome of a sustainability trend, which has been a topic since the 1970’s. In 1972 MIT analysts published alarming results concerning climate change in The Limits to Growth which received global recognition (Turner, 2008). The book revealed how climate change, because of human acts, would drastically change the earth for the worse (Meadows et al., 1972). This decade also knows two American energy crises, the first in 1973 and the second in 1979, representing the global dependency on nonrenewable resources (Ikenberry, 1986). At this time political solutions to the environmental issue had the emphasis, demonstrated by Presidents’ Carter famous 1980 State of the Union Address: ‘’Tonight I call on you–in fact, all the people of America–to help our Nation. Conserve energy. Eliminate waste. Make 1980 indeed a year of energy conservation.’’ (Carter, 1980).
Now, almost 40 years later, a lot on this topic has changed. For example, Al Gore Jr. received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on climate change in 2007 (Nobel Prize, 2007). And environmental sustainability has become rooted in companies’ DNA. From local initiatives like the ecological farmers market to big industrials like Coca-Cola and Tata Steel: all companies are starting to understand the strategic importance of environmental concerns (Banerjee, 2002).
Furthermore, there is an increase in ‘green’ customers and therefor an increase in the demand for sustainable products, especially for those produced by recognized environmentally aware companies (Roberts, 1996).
Companies react to this ‘green’ customer expectation by ‘designing for sustainability’. The product developers use so called design frameworks like ‘eco-efficiency’ and ‘life cycle thinking’ (Fargnoli et al., 2014).
In the future these existing design frameworks might not be enough for a company to have an environmental competitive advantage. Recent case studies have shown that the environmentally sensitive customer wants to be involved in product development. This implicates a shift from a company-centric value creation towards a customer-centric value creation.
This research focuses on the question if the customer has the capacity to carry the responsibility of co-creating sustainability products. Would everyone be capable or is this a job for the expert? The paper is organized as follows: in the following section ‘Co-creation and sustainability’ the concept of co-creation and the link to sustainability will be clarified. Then, in the section ‘Case studies’ two case studies will be presented and compared. Ending in the ‘Discussion and conclusion’ section where results of the research work are discussed.
CO-CREATION AND SUSTAINABILITY
Co-creation or participatory design is based on the principle of ‘active firm – active customer’, whereas the traditional model for product development is ‘active firm – passive customer’ (Arnold, 2015). Co-creation enables users and companies to interact and act as shared innovators in order to create value (Arnold, 2015; von Hippel, 1978). A number of tools have been developed for performing successful co-creation: innovation workshops (Arnold, 2010), ideas competition (Leimeister et al., 2009), or stakeholder dialogues (Arnold, 2015).
According to Arnold (2010) sustainable development requires new or combined knowledge or ideas. Co-creation has the capacity to deliver these new insights.
CASE STUDIES
Malmö Innovation Platform
Participatory design in Scandinavia dates back to the 1970’s (Bødker, 1994). Also, according to the yearly ranklist of the environmentally aware investment company Robecosam Scandinavia is a world leader when it comes to sustainability (Robecosam, 2018). From this Northern European region Sweden is the frontrunner when it comes to sustainability, taking the lead on the Robecosam ranking multiple times: 2013, 2015 and 2018 (Robecosam, 2018).
Sweden knows multiple sustainability projects. For instance, the city of Malmö. According to Malmö’s visitor website this city (300.000 inhabitants) intends to make all city activities climate neutral by 2020 and has a plan to ensure that the whole city runs on renewable energy by 2030 (Sustainable Malmö, 2018).
In order to reach this ambitious goal, Malmö established, among others, the Malmö Innovation Platform (MIP) in 2013. The MIP brings together municipal, business, academic (Lund University), and local community in order to provide a joint innovation capacity for the renovation of existing apartment buildings, where the aim is to use physical regeneration as a motor for economic, environmental and business development (McCormick & Kiss, 2015).
The objective of the MIP is knowledge production and the co-creation activities are in terms of: knowledge production, integration and sharing; network building; visioning and planning; policy recommendations and evaluation (Trencher et al., 2017). The design tools used for these co-creation activities are, amongst others: group assignments, role-play debate exercises, and reflection seminars (McCormick & Kiss, 2015). The results are: 20 initiated sustainability experiments ranging from heating system innovations to shaping tenant behavior towards energy, water, and waste (Filho & Brandli, 2016).
The Oberlin Project
At the heart of the American ‘Rust Belt’, what once was the price of American industrialization, lays a town called Oberlin (Ohio) with about 10.000 inhabitants (Abadi & Gal, 2018). Oberlin is a tiny town with a big educational community. Oberlin College, founded in 1833, hosts 2900 students and has a socially progressive legacy as the first to accept African Americans (Daneri et al., 2015).
Oberlin College’ latest mission is focused on sustainability. Together with Professor David Orr, Oberlin College founded The Oberlin Project (2010): a partnership between the City of Oberlin, Oberlin College, and diverse community stakeholders (Rosenberg Daneri et al., 2015). The projects’ ambitious mission is to stimulate and transform the City of Oberlin towards a sustainable, prosperous, and resilient town (Rosenberg Daneri et al., 2015; Oberlin Project, 2018).
Professor Orr has embodied a vision of ‘full spectrum sustainability’, where sustainability requires an integrated approach where all aspects of the town are affected (Rosenberg Daneri et al., 2015).
According to Rosenberg Daneri et al., (2015) the project increases sustainability ‘through student interaction with community stakeholders, participation in real world situations, and informal learning opportunities with the Oberlin Project staff’. Here, as presented by Jiusto et al. (2013), students are positioned as ‘doers’ instead of passive learners whilst being key suppliers of knowledge and sustainability initiatives to societal challenges. At the same time, other contributors, e.g. community stakeholders, learn from the students, resulting in a two-way learning process (Rosenberg Daneri et al., 2015).
The Oberlin Project’s co-creation activities are in terms of: creation of full-scale (unbounded) socio-technical configurations; employment or venture creation; real-estate development; environmental improvements or modifications; social capacity building (Trencher et al., 2017). The design tools used for these co-creation activities are, amongst others: hands-on knowledge production; project conception and implementation; team working; research; group skills building (Rosenberg Daneri et al., 2015). According to founder David Orr the results of the Oberlin Project, up on to 2017, are, amongst others: starting programs to grow the local food and farm economy, improve local housing, create an environmentally-educated public, and introduce sustainability into the local public schools’ curriculum (Mahony, 2017).