More about our innovation work

At Forum we research and promote sustainable innovation and support practical innovation projects. We have a few ways of doing this and we’re always on the lookout for new approaches to try too. Here’s a taste of some of what we do...

Innovation inspired by future scenarios

The future scenarios we create are an innovation dream. Generating ideas for how we will live in a range of different futures is stimulating and extremely valuable – a way of navigating sustainability that goes way beyond PowerPoint slides of doom and gloom to exciting, achievable solutions.

We generally do this by running workshops with businesses in which we explore the relevant future scenarios, the risks and opportunities they present and then collaboratively generate ideas for the products, services and business models that will thrive in 2025, 2040 or whichever year the scenarios are set in. We will often prototype the ideas to develop them further, and then ask our trusty designer to storyboard them so they can be presented back to the business internally and taken forward.

Most recently we’ve been running workshops like these with Unilever, Levis Strauss & Co., Akzo-Nobel, M&S, eBay and Sony.

For more information about our futures work, click here.

Innovation inspired by collaboration

We also set up projects based on companies working together collaboratively on a common challenge. We’ve found this to be an excellent model for system innovation.

We brought together Akzo-Nobel (who make Dulux paint) and Carillion (a construction firm that buys gallons of paint per year) - in a project to enhance sustainability throughout the lifecycle of paint. This led to EcoSure and EcoSense, brilliant pots of paint now on sale, which are far more sustainable than anything else on the shelf.

We also worked with design consultancy IDEO on the i-team project, helping local authorities develop innovative solutions for tackling climate change. The ideas we dreamed up with them are up and running two years on.

Innovation inspired by metrics

We shouldn’t forget the importance of measuring. Our work around assessing impacts and organisational progress is an invaluable driver for innovation.

We develop tools to embed sustainability into innovation processes to highlight key environmental and social impacts, both positive and negative. We focus on front-end, qualitative assessment approaches, and we mostly do this by asking questions. We almost never develop tools that require detailed data input - we think this doesn’t help to drive meaningful innovation because it’s only possible to play with detailed data towards the end of an innovation process.

Our Sustainable Business Model Tool helps develop business ideas, which satisfy needs in more sustainable ways. Our Streamlined Life Cycle Analysis offers a quick, cheap way to make rapid improvements in product sustainabilty and is used by several companies.

At a product group level, one size rarely fits all and our strengths lie in developing tailored solutions. Eco rating, the UK’s first sustainable rating scheme for handsets, changed the landscape of mobile phone design. We developed it with Telefonica O2, in collaboration with seven handset manufacturers, ensuring widespread industry buy-in.

Enabling innovation for sustainability

Thankfully, we’re not the only sustainable innovators around. Individuals and organisations are searching for and developing the solutions we need for a low-carbon economy every day. We help to enable and accelerate their work, by raising the profile of sustainable innovation in what we publish, how we converse with policy-makers and the projects we work on with our partners.

We helped raise the profile of sustainable innovation when we launched the Climate Change Challenge, a global competition for innovations designed to address climate change, in partnership with the Financial Times and HP.

Forum’s extended family

Innovation ain’t no walk in the park. And one of the most important things in the pursuit of innovation is to surround yourself with the ‘right’ mix of people. Trying to generate ideas with the same folk can feel frustrating after a while – so we pride ourselves on linking in with a superb network of doers, go-getters, innovators and all-sorts. People who will walk into a room and challenge what we’re doing, give invaluable input and energy, and generally make the process 100% more creative, diverse and rewarding.

Get in touch

There are many more examples of what we have done in each of the four innovation methods. Get in touch if you would like to find out more!