| Innovations take place within organisations, out of a need for renewal or improvement of current affairs. An innovation is a process that brings renewal into an existing situation. Innovations often start from an impulse. One impulse that currently emerges from society is the demand for sustainable products, services and processes. To be able to resprond to this demand, firms should familiarise themselves with the concept of sustainability. One important factor will be to operationalise sustainability in order to manage it. Sustainability in literature is described in terms of ecological, environmental and societal factors. From the ecological and economical perspectives, sustainability is more or less understood and institutionalised now within firms. The social factor remains to be considered more closely. To be able to operationalise and manage sustainability, knowledge on the three mentioned fields will be essential. This knowdledge should be institutionalised within organisations; people should be aware about the consequences of their actions in relation to sustainability. To achieve this, knowledge about sustainability should be managed accurately, in order to apply it within the activities conducted by an organisation. An organisation can be helped in this process of making their activities more sustainable, by the usage of tools. Sustainability is assumed to be a complicated knowledge domain, in which case a tool accomodated within software is considered a logical choice. The aim of this research will be at the construction of such a software tool that supports decision making for innovation processes on the field of sustainability. The following questions are used to eventually come to such a tool (1) What influences does an innovation have to the filling-in of an innovation process? (2) Out of which compliments is sustainability composed and what relationships exist? (3) How should sustainability be operationalised for innovations, in order to measure sustainability within the framework of sustainable innovation ? (4). What role does knowledge pay within sustainable innovations? (5) In what way should a software instrument be constructed, in order to support decision making during innovation processes on the filed of sustainability? |
