Global Sustainability and Innovation offers an in-depth look into the theory and practice of sustainability. This text seeks to provide students with a straightforward and accessible guide to understanding this rapidly emerging and widely misunderstood field. A diverse range of essential topics in sustainability are examined, including energy, environmental conservation, and the green revolution. New topics explored in this edition include climate change, recycling, and the effect of renewable energy sources on the environment. Global Sustainability and Innovation offers an innovative approach to studying sustainability. By exploring the roles of reuse, recycling, and remanufacturing in business decisions, it illustrates the techniques necessary to establish sustainable business practices. The text features several real-world case studies from leading experts that give readers a glimpse into how sustainability is currently being implemented in product and process design decisions at several major organizations. Global Sustainability and Innovation ties together diverse elements to impart a holistic overview of the sustainability spectrum. It is ideal for courses in sustainability and courses focused on the environment and renewable energy.
Sustainability, Technology and Innovation 4.0 is a holistic perception and analysis of innovation at the level of public organisations, innovation in industry and innovation in HR. Its chapters collectively present a thesis that Innovation 4.0 signals a technological revolution that has the opportunity to prevent environmental degradation and, in particular, to stop climate warming, the effects of which may disrupt the process of sustainable development. Uniquely, this edited book offers a comprehensive and multi-faceted examination of Innovation 4.0, fulfilling methodical, empirical and utilitarian goals. The methodological objective is to present tools that allow the identification, analysis and assessment of the relationship between Innovation 4.0 and inspiration that will carry society towards a new economic and social order. Its empirical aim is to enable the analysis and evaluation of the role of public organisations, innovation in industry and innovation in HR in the process of building sustainable development of the global environment. The book’s utilitarian goal is a recommendation for global organisations of Innovation 4.0 as an instrument to stimulate an innovative economy. This is a high-level research book aimed at postgraduates, MBA students, researchers and academics from business colleges and universities, and may also provide a valuable strategic perspective for business executives.
As the world becomes more urbanised, solutions are required to solve current challenges for three arenas of sustainability: social sustainability, environmental sustainability and urban economic sustainability. This edited volume interrogates innovative solutions for sustainability in cities around the world. The book draws on a group of 12 international case studies, including Vancouver and Calgary in Canada, San Francisco and Los Angeles in the US (North America), Yogyakarta in Indonesia, Seoul in Korea (South-East Asia), Medellin in Colombia (South America), Helsinki in Finland, Freiburg in Germany and Seville in Spain (Europe). Each case study provides key facts about the city, presents the particular urban sustainability challenge and the planning innovation process and examines what trade-offs were made between social, environmental and economic sustainability. Importantly, the book analyses to what extent these planning innovations can be translated from one context to another. This book will be essential reading to students, academics and practitioners of urban planning, urban sustainability, urban geography, architecture, urban design, environmental sciences, urban studies and politics.
Eco-Innovation considers the impact industry has on our environmental surroundings whilst exploring the need for more sustainable development. The concept of sustainable development and the general understanding of the interdependence of the environment and the economy are both examined in this thought-provoking new book.
The rise of collaborative consumption, peer-to-peer systems, and not-for-profit social enterprise heralds the emergence of a new era of human collectivity. Increasingly, this consolidation stems from an understanding that big-banner issues—such as climate change—are not the root causes of our present global predicament. There is a growing and collective view that issues such as this are actually symptoms of a much more vicious, seemingly insurmountable condition: our addiction to economic, consumption, and population growth in a world of finite resources. Nanotechnology and Global Sustainability uses nanotechnology—the product of applied scientific knowledge to control and utilize matter at atomic and molecular scales—as a lens through which to explore the interrelationship between innovation, politics, economy, and sustainability. This groundbreaking book addresses how stakeholders can actively reshape agendas to create positive and sustainable futures through this latest controversial, cross-sectoral technology. It moves beyond issues of efficiency, productivity, and utility, exploring the insights of 22 contributors from around the world, whose work spans the disciplines of science and the humanities. Their combined knowledge, reinforced with various case studies, introduces an exciting prospect—how we can innovate without economic growth. This new volume in the Perspectives in Nanotechnology series is edited by Dr. Donald Maclurcan and Dr. Natalia Radywyl. Dr. Maclurcan is a social innovator and Honorary Research Fellow with the Institute for Nanoscale Technology at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Dr. Radywyl is a social researcher and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is also an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Faculty of Life and Social Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne. This book is written for a wide audience and will be of particular interest to activists, scholars, policy makers, scientists, business professionals, and others who seek an understanding of how we might justly transition to sustainable societies.
Despite recent optimism and global initiatives, the implementation of corporate sustainability programs has been slow at best, with less than a third of global companies having developed a clear business case for their approach to sustainability. Presenting numerous award-winning cases and examples from companies such as Unilever, Patagonia, Tumi, DSM and Umicore alongside original ideas based upon 20 years of consulting experience, this book reveals how to design and implement a stronger sense of focus and move sustainability programs forward. This proven combination of purpose, direction and speed is dubbed “Vectoring”. Based upon practitioner cases and data analysis from the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, Vectoring offers a plain-spoken framework to identify the relative position of companies compared to their peers. The framework and its 4 archetypes deliver insights for practitioners to locate inhibitors and overcome them by providing practical suggestions for process improvements. This includes designing and executing new sustainability programs, embedding the SDGs within company strategy and assessing the impact of sustainability programs on competitiveness and valuation. Offering directions for CFOs to shift companies from integrated reporting to integrated thinking in order to accelerate their sustainability programs, Winning Sustainability Strategies shows how to achieve purpose with profit and how to do well by doing good.
Examining the links between sustainable development, innovation strategy and the business model, this thought-provoking and timely book uses insightful case studies from mature and developing markets to demonstrate how sustainability needs to be at the core of every organization's strategy and innovation.
. . . offering an enjoyable read in comparative politics and policy, it offers a point of reference for understanding the conceptual and empirical possibilities for further research in EPI. Darren McCauley, West European Politics . . . a bank of internationally based case studies written by leading environmental experts. The Environmentalist The organisation of th[is] book is exemplary, particularly for an edited volume. . . [A]n impressive intellectual contribution to the understanding of EPI. . . I strongly recommend it to scholars and students. . . and, crucially, also to politicians and civil servants who have attempted (or half-attempted) the task of remedying the historical neglect of environmental issues. Ian Bailey, Environment and Planning C Good social science may not raise our spirits, but it should improve our policy understanding. Andrew Jordan and Andrea Lenschow have produced a volume that provides a subtle and empirically informed understanding of environmental policy integration, using a design that looks both at the full policy cycle and at cross-national comparisons. From the foreword by Albert Weale FBA, University of Essex, UK Policy coordination is normally studied in hierarchical and institutional terms. This volume demonstrates the power of an idea to function as a framework for coordination. It offers an innovative study of policy coordination, as well as a thorough study of environmental policy. Guy Peters, University of Pittsburgh, US This book deals with a critical challenge facing modern governments: how to integrate environmental thinking into all policy areas. It provides fascinating insights into the progress made in realizing this objective and is a must read for anyone interested in understanding how far we have come, and how far we still have to go, in greening government for sustainable development. James Meadowcroft, Carleton University, Canada This collection brings together leading scholars in the field to explore the origins and applications of different instruments of environmental policy integration from a comparative perspective. This book is a must read for environmental policy practitioners and scholars with an interest in how environmental outcomes can and are being improved. Miranda A. Schreurs, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany Environmental Policy Integration (EPI) is an innovative policy principle designed to deliver sustainable development. This book offers an unrivalled exploration of its conceptualization and implementation, drawing upon a set of interlinked case studies of the most common implementing instruments and the varied experience of applying them in six OECD states and the EU. Written by a team of international experts, it identifies and explains broad patterns and dynamics in what is an important area of contemporary environmental policy analysis. This insightful account of the state-of-the-art aims to offer a valuable resource for academics interested in environmental politics and policy analysis, as well as the broader, interdisciplinary theme of governance for sustainable development . It will interest advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses in comparative politics, public administration and environmental politics and policy-making. Given the continuing political relevance of sustainability, it should also appeal to NGOs, think tanks and international bodies attempting to coordinate policies across and within different levels of governance.
