Environment and Innovations

1. Environment and Innovations
Rahul K Kamble
Assistant Professor
Department of Environmental Science
Sardar Patel College, Chandrapur, Maharashtra, India

2. Contents
• Definition
• Goals of innovation
• Waves of innovation
• Barriers and drivers of innovation
• Eco-efficiency
• Eco-industry
• Benefits of eco-innovation

3. What is a innovation?
• The process of translating an idea or
invention into a good or service that
creates value or for which customer
will pay.
To be called a innovation:-
An idea must be replicable at an
economic cost and must satisfy a
specific need.

4. Categories of innovation

5. • Evolutionary innovations:
Continuous or dynamic evolutionary
innovation; that are brought about
by many incremental advances in
technology or processes
• Revolutionary innovations:
Discontinuous innovations; these are
often disruptive (troublesome) and
new

6. Eco-innovation
“The creation of novel and competitively
priced goods, processes, systems,
services, and procedures that can satisfy
human needs and bring quality of life to
all people with a life cycle minimal use of
natural resources per unit output, and a
minimal release of toxic substances”.

7. Goals of sustainability (2050)
• The ecological footprint per person should
not exceed 1.2 hectares (Ecological
footprint = An expression for the amount of
natural resources required to supply goods
and services to humans with a certain
standards of living and to dispose off their
attended wastes).
• The world wide per capita consumption of
non-renewable resources should be less
than 5-6 tons per year.

10. Barriers and drivers to eco-innovation
• Drivers
– Cost, notably energy reduction
– Price and regulatory factors
– Firms image
– Standardization
– Reorganization of taxation system (shifting
taxation burden from labour to resources)
– Educational level and availability of information
– Environment Management Tool
– Environmentally oriented innovation policy

11. • Barriers
– High cost of innovation
– Lack of an appropriate source of finance
– Excessive economic risk
– Higher prizes of environmental products
– Customer proximity (nearness) and acceptance
– Qualified personnel

12. Eco-efficiency
• “Less environmental impact per unit of
product or service value”
• Eco-efficiency = product or service
value/environmental impact
• Environmental impact is measured on the
basis of resource use (resource side) as well as
emission to air, water and soil (the sink side)
per product unit/activity.

13. Strategies to improve Eco-efficiency
• Reduce material intensity
• Reduce energy intensity
• Reduce dispersion of toxic substances
• Enhance recyclability
• Maximum use of renewable
• Extend product durability
• Increase service intensity

15. Eco-industry
“Activities which produce goods and
services to measure, prevent, limit,
minimize or correct environmental
damage to water, air and soil, as well as
problems related to waste, noise and
eco-systems. This includes technologies,
products and services that reduce
environmental risk and minimize
pollution and resources” (EU 2006)

16. Eco-industries
• Solid waste
management
• Wastewater
treatment
• Air pollution control
• Remediation and
cleanup of soil &
groundwater
• Noise & vibration
control
• Water supply
• Recycled materials
• Renewable energy
• Nature protection
• Eco-construction
• Environmental
monitoring and
instrumentation

17. Benefits of eco-innovation
• Direct benefits
–Cost savings from
greater resource
productivity and
better logistic
–Sales from
commercialization
• Indirect benefits
–Better image
–Better relation with
suppliers, customer
and authorities
–Health and safety
benefits
–Worker satisfaction

18. Environmental issues and envisaged solutions
Period Issue Solution
Until the 1960’s Health Infrastructure
Seventies Industries Environmental
Technologies
Eighties Products Life cycle management
Nineties Resources Eco-efficiency
Presently Consumption Sustainable innovation

19. Types of innovations

20. Types of eco-innovations
• Towards a life cycle perspective
• Product and process innovations
• Organizational innovations
• Marketing innovations

21. Towards a life-cycle perspective

22. • Eco-innovation can be introduced at any stage
of product/service (from cradle to grave)
• End-of-pipe or curative technologies are least
efficient
• Resource and energy efficiency are important
preventive measures
• They use minimum material input and
decreasing level of waste output
• Biggest resource efficiency gains can be in
upstream part

23. • In downstream phase of the product life cycle
resource efficiency gains are significantly
lower

24. Product and process innovations
• Introduction of good or service that is new or
significantly improved wrt its characteristics or
intended uses
• Improvement in technical specifications,
components and materials, incorporated
software, user friendliness or other functional
characteristics

26. Organizational innovation
• Implementation of new organizational
method in firm’s business practices,
workplace organization or external relations
• Organizational innovations include:
– EMS or process control tools
– Environmental audits or chain management
– ISO 14000 family or EMAS (EU instrument)

27. Marketing innovations
• Implementation of new marketing method
• Changes in product design or packaging,
product placement, product promotion or
pricing
• Marketing innovation can be of high
importance from the point of eco-innovation

28. Levels of eco-innovation
• Micro (product or service, process, company)
• Meso (sector, supply chain, region, product
system/service system);
• Macro (economy-wide : nation, economic
blocks, global)

29. Determinant of eco-innovation
Determinant = Factor which decisively
(positively) affects the nature or outcome of
something. e.g. Genetics may be the most
important determinate of your weight.
Eco-innovations are determined by two: general
factors and environmentally specific factors

30. • Eco-innovation determinants in three groups:
• Supply side
– Technological (and management capabilities)
– Appropriation problem and market characteristics
– Path dependencies
• Demand side
– Market demand
– Social awareness of the need for clean production
– Environmental policy
– Pricing of eco-innovative goods and services

31. • Institutional structure
– Political opportunities
– Organizational information flow
– Existence of innovation networks
– International agreements

32. Innovation system
• “The set of organizations and their linkages
through which innovation processes
develops”.
• Innovation system in developing countries is
poorly constructed and very fragmented
• Enterprise operates in the informal economy
• Disconnected from the rest of the economy
• On knowledge side, some research
communities operating usually in an ivory
tower

33. • University system poorly connected to local
realities
• Lack of technological support services and
infrastructure
• Public sector institutes are numerous
• It is not easy to establish new, efficient
organizations for the promotion of
innovations
• These overall conditions keep innovations
systems into low equilibrium, low R&D

34. The innovation system is defined as “The set of
organization (firms, universities, public
laboratories etc.) and their linkages through
which innovation processes develop”.

35. Innovation process
• Success stories has following features:
• Projects are borne by very motivated
individuals/small group
– Assistance from foreign partners who bring in
some finance, technology and market network
– Support of local participants - helps in
bureaucratic and institutional barriers

36. • Projects tend to concentrate in well defined
localities
– These people are able to find, exploit or create a
differentiated advantages, a process of emulation
and replication among the surrounding
communities
• Differentiating advantages are strong
university, dynamic industrial communities,
agricultural communities
• E.g. Asparagus production in Peru who have
even created a university to consolidate their
knowledge, and develop research & training

37. Tools for innovation measurement
• Number of tools to quantity technological
change and innovation in order to develop a
methodology for measuring eco-innovation.
Four general categories of tools:
• Input measurement: R&D expenditure, R&D
personnel and innovation expenditure
• Intermediate output measures: Number of
patents and number of scientific publications

38. • Direct measure of innovative output: Number
of innovations, description of individual
innovations, data on scale and new products
• Indirect measures derived from aggregate
data: Change in resource efficiency and
productivity using decomposition analysis.

39. • Following three methods as being the most
suitable for measuring eco-innovation
- Survey analysis,- Patent analysis,- Digital and
documentary source analysis
- Patent analysis:
Step 1: Choice of related parameters
Step 2: Patent search using keywords
Step 3: Screening of the abstract of the patent
Step 4: Retrieval of patent families

40. Thank you