Eco-innovation support through companies network – ALIENNOR

Our society is more and more concerned about environmental issues. Nowadays, with an annual consumption of raw materials of about 60 billion tons, the world population consumes about 50% more natural resources than 30 years ago.
Designing sustainable products is crucial but eco-design and eco-innovation methods are not entirely satisfying. Indeed, these are not suited to all requirements of eco-innovation because of their complexity or their tendency to mainly provide techno-centric solutions. To eco-innovate it is therefore urgent to define methods and tools which can be “activated” by any kind of design teams (from SMEs to large industrial groups), that is to say, develop and bring to market products or services with a high environmental ambition. The target is a reduction of impact of an X factor, superior or at least equal to 4 by 2025.

In the ALIENNOR project, we claim to develop and validate new eco-innovation tools based on Eco-ideation Stimulation Mechanisms (ESM) both didactic and accurate. These mechanisms explore systemic dimensions of sustainable development, poorly exploited sofar yet very promising. They help us eco-innovate more broadly by getting out of the technical scope of the product. The general objective of this project is to bring new knowledge on eco-innovation processes to support small businesses (start up and SMEs). SMEs are the targeted companies because of their local dynamism and their proximity towards a global, ambitious social and technological innovation approach for 2025 (one of the 7 main themes of the report by the 2013 French Innovation Commission ). More than ever, to be viable these companies need to be reassured about the benefits of their future projects. They also need to be part of the industrial and civil society networks.

The results of the ALIENNOR project are described as 4 methodological brick :
1) A structured and international database of eco-innovation cases covering all areas and industries: services, energy, or construction. This database, which has never been created before, will generate ecoinnovation archetypes.
2) A toolbox containing a limited number (between 7 and 12) of Eco-ideation Stimulation Mechanisms promoting an efficient exploration of the design possibilities (for example MSE1: Innovate with stakeholders, MSE2: Innovate with biomimicry etc.)
3) A toolkit to assess sustainability, allowing to evaluate and to select in early phases of development the best concepts with an high economical, environmental and societal potential.
4) An open web and pooled platform performing the deployment of the method, and ensuring the attractiveness for industrial from various sectors. The companies, especially SMEs, do not evolve in a closed system. This open platform also meets the need to open the innovation process of SMEs to the partners of the value chain.