Orchestrating Innovation for Sustainable Development

Sustainable development is a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development; and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations this is how the concept of Sustainability is introduced in the Brundtland report (1987: chapter 2, paragraph 15). What does this mean for the purpose, vision and mission of a global company? How can the concept of sustainable development guide or even drive innovation in the 21st century? Which leadership challenges need to be addressed on the journey towards innovation for sustainable development? These questions are tackled in this book along two interlinked change journeys. The initiation of transformational organizational change through embedding the concept of sustainable development as innovation driver demands fundamental changes of innovation goals, processes and metric and significant human agency. Informal business pioneers and formal leaders in management positions as well as top level corporate staff need to individually and collectively develop new skills, behaviors and attitudes to enable the massive change required to respond to current global challenges. Senior managers, corporate practitioners, internal change agents, consultants and master students of different disciplines will discover a variety of practical challenges and related solutions that surface once sustainable development is meant to become an as important business purpose as financial performance.

Dorothea Ernst (formerly Seebode) is a pathfinder, pioneer, and architect of disruptive innovation. Her strength lies in creating dialogue around new and complex challenges and opportunities. Having pioneered end-user driven innovation at Philips Lighting, she led cultural change as senior director of sustainability at Philips Research. Dorothea is a LEAD Fellow and holds a PhD in physics from the RWTH Aachen, Germany. She now works as in independent advisor and coach.