New ideas that work - and last

Climate change, poverty, resource shortages, waste and pollution are among the greatest challenges the world faces. To survive and prosper in the 21st century we will need new ways to live, work, produce and consume. Both businesses and public sector organisations will need to master sustainable innovation to compete and succeed in the new economy.

But the challenges of sustainability are also an opportunity, offering a fantastic new set of innovation levers. They help us look at the world through new lenses and think about entirely new ways of doing things.

Forum for the Future can help your business innovate to create sustainable products and services, new business models and profound and exciting change.

How we innovate Making products and services more sustainable
Forum for the Future works with partners to improve the sustainability of their existing products and services. This can help reduce costs and risk, attract ‘greener’ customers and provide a visible sign of sustainability commitments. Recently, we helped mobile phone manufacturer Sony Ericsson develop and launch its flagship ‘GreenHeart’ range of handsets with a carbon footprint 15% lower than comparable devices.

“Forum for the Future’s considerable authority in sustainable development contributed to a very successful and thought-provoking Brand Imprint workshop.” - Santiago Gowland, VP Brand & Corporate Responsibility, Unilever

Innovations to change the world
A sustainable future will need a completely new generation of products and services, allowing companies to make money in fresh and innovative ways. We help companies generate new concepts for products and services which will win in a low-carbon world.

We used a set of future scenarios to set the context for young innovators in the Design Directions project. Working with Unilever, Dulux and the Royal Society of Arts, we challenged them to design completely new products and services for personal care and surface covering in 2025.

New thinking and approaches: taking sustainability ‘out of the box’
The scale and urgency of our sustainability challenges requires us to approach them in innovative and creative ways. We want to stimulate innovative thinking and help companies find novel solutions. Our Disruptive Innovation cards capture different methods of thinking ‘out of the box’– encouraging the sort of game-changing ideas we will need to create a sustainable future.
 
Tools and methods for embedding sustainability in innovation
For innovation for sustainability to happen successfully it needs to be properly embedded into existing innovation processes. We work with companies to produce bespoke tools and methods to do this.

Our Streamlined Lifecycle Analysis tool, for example, assesses the sustainability of new product ideas and highlights ways to improve their key environmental and social impacts. We have used this on innovation projects with many companies and some have embedded it across their innovation or research and development process.

“Forum for the Future have consistently challenged us at each stage of the project – offering independent, external advice and recommendations. Their involvement has proved invaluable.” - Kerryn Schrank, Program Director, targetneutral, BP Biofuels

Case Study: Sustainable Paint
Working in a consortium with ICI Paints AkzoNobel (supplier) and Carillion (paint user), we spent three years studying how to reduce the impacts of paint and paint systems. We analysed the complete lifecycle – from material extraction through to the end of a building’s life, and generated several important innovations.

The project led to the creation of the Dulux Trade Ecosure waterborne paint – a new eco-paint range that combines high performance with a reduced environmental footprint. Ecosure achieved savings of 25% in embodied carbon, water and waste compared with its predecessor.

ICI paints Akzo Nobel has also launched Envirowash - a ‘closed-loop’ water recycling system for construction sites, which reduces the amount of water used by contractors to wash brushes and rollers. It is also piloting a new bulk paint delivery system which replaces the disposable five or 10 litre paint tins with a refillable 500 litre solution. We are currently trialing a paint can recycling system too.

Find out more about our work on innovation. 

For more details of Forum’s innovation work and how it can benefit you contact:

Chris Sherwin
+44 (0)20 7324 3633