Intentional Design for Diversity as Pathway to Scalable Sustainability Impact

Abstract

If a company aims to contribute to a better world it wants to achieve positive sustainability impact on a large scale. It should then foresee that this large, up till global, scale includes many different and often interconnected manifestations. The authors in this chapter discuss a design approach that takes these different manifestations and connections into account from the start. The resulting architecture for the innovation (product, service and business model) is then more adaptive towards different requirements and settings. This positively affects the scalability for implementation and thus impact in multiple markets. The authors also discuss the implications for the management approach needing to be in line with this design approach, in particular regarding goal setting and level of (de)centralisation. They encourage practitioners as well as researchers to further explore this alignment.