MULTi-Eco-Innov

The current trend of intensive innovation brings products with accelerated obsolescence to the market, in the logic of selling more and more, increasing the rate of exploitation of materials or energies and the emission of pollutants. It is necessary to imagine new and more sustainable modes of consumption and production in order to break this negative spiral of waste. The aim of this research program is to provide: • An environmental innovation with a strong impact reduction, of the order of Factor 4, with a maximization of the use of the material over time while satisfying the expected uses, • A social and economic viability of the mode of consumption associated with the eco-innovative system (including eco-innovation, associated services, mode of sale, producer organization, etc.) and over time (phases of emergence, adoption and sustainability), • A design approach coordinating environmental, social and economic challenges, with elements / bricks that are understandable and operable for industrial designers and decision-makers. The MULTi project proposes to design upgradable (MULTi integrations of functional improvements) and eco-shareable systems (MULTi users supported towards an eco-use), and thus to make the best use of the material extracted and shaped over time by maximizing the number of operating cycles of any product. For systems with a low or rare intensity of use, and there are many, they would be shared among several users, with attention paid to eco-use to avoid usage drifts generating overconsumption and degradations harmful to the lifetime of the system. For products with wear and obsolescence problems, their operating time would be extended by making these systems adaptable / upgradeable / flexible via the integration of new modules incorporating or not functional improvements or upgrades. These MULTi systems, with their associated services for sharing and upgradability, therefore define a new mode of consumption that requires a new kind of business model: defined as a business strategy tool, it must be designed in connection with the control and the management of consumption operational process to ensure the emergence-adoption and sustainability path of these MULTi systems. The MULTi program claims that this work of redefining the drivers of the economic viability must be extended to obtaining social sustainability, that is to say, it is necessary to rethink the networks of stakeholders (business side, consumer side), their relationships, their intermediation devices and their motivations which go beyond conventional commercial exchange. To seriously address these multiple issues, the consortium of this project stands out by the multidisciplinary nature of its members, combining the knowledge / skills / methodologies and points of view of technologists and managers on the business, marketing or financial aspects and on the social science aspects with the study of the relationships between stakeholders. The final deliverable will take the form of a methodological guide for the design of MULTi systems (product, service, business model, social sustainability), multidisciplinary therefore and which is intended to be operated by a design team. Intermediate objects will be developed and used as a medium between disciplines in the project and will ultimately serve as an intermediate phase of the design in the guide, which will be available for free access on the web.