Climate change, poverty, resource shortages, waste and pollution are among the greatest challenges the world faces. We won’t survive without new thinking and more creative approaches. We will need completely new ways to live, work, produce and consume if we are to hit global sustainable development targets and goals. This is a challenge to innovate.

Innovation is the way companies survive, remain competitive and grow, as well as the way to create new public services to satisfy society’s needs. Both businesses and public sector organisations need to innovate sustainably to prosper, compete and survive in the new economy of the 21st century.

But the challenges of sustainability are also an opportunity and offer a fantastic new set of innovation levers – allowing us to look at the world through new lenses and think about how we do things in entirely new ways.

Our work

Forum for the Future researches and promotes sustainable innovation and supports practical innovation projects.

Futures into innovation

We use futures methods to generate new ideas and concepts for the products and services, initiatives and schemes that will win in the 21st century. In the RSA Design Directions project - Changing Worlds – we set students a brief to innovate using a series of predefined future scenarios. Low Carbon Living 2022 highlights products and services we could be using in a future where we lead low-carbon lifestyles.

Stakeholder innovation

We get people to see the world in new ways and encourage fresh thinking in innovation processes by bringing together people with different perspectives and involving external innovators. We brought together ICI – a paint supplier – and Carillion – a major paint customer – in a project to enhance sustainability throughout the lifecycle of paint. We worked with design consultancy IDEO in the i-team project, helping local authorities develop innovative methods to tackle climate change.

Measuring innovation

We assess the sustainability of innovations and highlight their key environmental and social impacts, both positive and negative. Our Business Models for Sustainable Consumption project produced a tool for developing business ideas, which satisfy needs in more sustainable ways. Our Streamlined Life Cycle Analysis tool is used by several companies.

Enabling innovation for sustainability

We work to enable and accelerate sustainable innovation, ensuring it happens systematically in our partner organisations and raising its profile in the wider innovation community. We raised the profile of green innovation by launching the Climate Change Challenge, a global competition for innovations designed to address global warming, in partnership with the Financial Times. We worked with the interior design teams of the John Lewis Partnership to develop a tool to approach sustainable design systematically.

Find out more about the services we offer organisations.

News

Just launched - Smarter Finance
A guide to the innovative financial models enabling the public sector to meet their carbon targets more cost-effectively. Find out how to use financial models – from revolving funds to service companies – to save carbon and make your funds go further.

Contact:

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!

Chris Sherwin - leads the work and team                                                   Fiona Bennie - specialist in sustainable design and user centred innovation
Ilka Weissbrod - expert on embedding, managing and measuring innovation
Gemma Adams - specialist in sustainable and public sector innovation
Hugh Knowles - expert on futures into innovation
James Taplin – leads our work on innovation and ICT