Towards Sustainable Innovation

Sven Pastoors is Lecturer in International Law and Sustainable Innovation at the Department of International Marketing, Fontys International Business School, Venlo. In addition, he works as freelance lecturer for the Team Europe of the European Commission and the German Bundestag. He is member of the advisory board of the Crossing Borders research group at FIBS Venlo. Joachim H. Becker is Lecturer in Communication and Human Resource Management at the Department of International Marketing, Fontys International Business School Venlo, for more than 15 years. Additional focal points of his work are organisational psychology and personal coaching. Rob van Dun is Lecturer in Economics and Sustainable Innovation at the Department of International Business and Management Studies, Fontys International Business School Venlo. His additional fields of expertise are international business strategies, international management, business consulting and cross-cultural differences. Ulrich Scholz is Senior Lecturer in International Marketing and Management at the Department of International Marketing, Fontys International Business School Venlo, for nearly 20 years. He has published a number of articles and books on sustainable innovation and customer relation management.

With sustainability having gained a lot of momentum over the last years and companies implementing strategies to create corporate sustainability, there are lots of opportunities for innovation. Thus, the two concepts of sustainability and innovation should not be considered separately - they are closely interlinked with one another. The main goal of sustainable innovation is to develop new products and technologies that have a positive impact on the company's triple-bottom-line. To meet this aim, they have to be ecologically and economically beneficial as well as socially balanced. In order to help companies to improve their sustainable innovation process practically, this book is structured into five possible phases of a sustainable innovation process: Awareness of a sustainability problem, Identification & Definition of the problem, Ideation & Evaluation of the solutions, Testing & Enrichment of the solutions, Implementation of the solutions & Green Marketing.