Sustainable innovations and their societal impact

An increasing number of organizations aims to develop and launch new sustainable products, services and/or business models. Many of such sustainable innovations require system change, making it important to not only take into account traditional performance measures (like sales), but also to consider the degree to which the innovation makes an impact on society. This projects aims to explore (1) how societal impact can be measured and (2) which activities organizations need to employ to make a societal impact. Based on a literature study and an indepth investigation of four projects from a successful organization specialised in sustainable innovations (Tendris), this project will develop measures for societal impact as well as make an inventory of the activities that are required to create societal impact. Next, these findings will be tested in a mixture of experiments and case analyses of projects from other organizations to investigate whether the identified activities indeed have an influence on society. The project thus results in practical guidelines for organizations that want their innovations to have an impact on society in terms of concrete activities that they need to employ. In addition, the project will result in measurement instruments that managers and policy makers can use to monitor progress with regard to societal impact and that can serve as an important ingredient for social impact bonds.