Product Service System Innovation in the Smart City

Product service systems (PSS) may usefully form part of the mix of innovations necessary to move society toward more sustainable futures. However, despite such potential, PSS implementation is highly uneven and limited. Drawing on an alternate socio-technical perspective of innovation, this paper provides fresh insights, on among other things the role of context in PSS innovation, to address this issue. Case study research is presented focusing on a use orientated PSS in an urban environment: the Copenhagen city bike scheme. The paper shows that PSS innovation is a situated complex process, shaped by actors and knowledge from other locales. It argues that further research is needed to investigate how actors interests shape PSS innovation. It recommends that institutional spaces should be provided in governance landscapes associated with urban environments to enable legitimate PSS concepts to co-evolve in light of locally articulated sustainability principles and priorities

Law, Environment, and the “Nondismal” Social Sciences

Over the past 30 years, the influence of economics over the study of environmental law and policy has expanded considerably, becoming in the process the predominant framework for analyzing regulations that address pollution, natural resource use, and other environmental issues. This review seeks to complement the expansion of economic reasoning and methodology within the field of environmental law and policy by identifying insights to be gleaned from various “nondismal” social sciences. In particular, three areas of inquiry are highlighted as illustrative of interdisciplinary work that might help to complement law and economics and, in some cases, compensate for it: the study of how human individuals perceive, judge, and decide; the observation and interpretation of how knowledge schemes are created, used, and regulated; and the analysis of how states and other actors coordinate through international and global regulatory regimes. The hope is to provide some examples of how environmental law and policy research can be improved by deeper and more diverse engagement with social science

Exploring the design and perceived benefit of sustainable solutions: a review

The demand for more innovative solutions to meet progressively complex consumer requirements is increasingly at the forefront of design practice and research. Coinciding with this is the stipulation for more environmentally, socially and economically sustainable services. Although many approaches towards the design of more systemic and sustainable solutions exist, the terminology to describe them is manifold. Subsequently, confusion surrounding the cross-disciplinary process that stakeholders are required to follow is increasingly apparent. This paper presents a critical review of multiple-design approaches from the perspective of the stakeholders involved and identifies a set of attributes that are common to them. It is concluded that stakeholders could substantially benefit from a supportive framework of common characteristics to enable the integrative design of more systemic and sustainable solutions

Eco-efficient producer services. What are they, how do they benefit the environment and how likely are they to develop?

The potential environmental benefits of moving from a product-based economy to a functional economy involving greater use of services is a subject of increasing interest and debate in the field of eco-efficiency. This paper provides a typology and fuller analysis of eco-efficient producer services than hitherto reported. Three broad classes of service are described and assessed: product based including product results, product utility and product extension; electronic substitution and information based. Examples of each are drawn from a major study on the successes and barriers of eco-services in Europe. The paper concludes that while there are a number of areas of success, there are considerable barriers to wider development and uptake of such services, and that many of the more successful service applications are not necessarily driven by environmental considerations. The paper warns that the shift from products to services cannot be assumed to be eco-efficient and there are a number of rebound effects which need to be carefully analysed. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Sustainable Product-Service System (S.PSS)

A key contemporary query is the following: within the current social, environmental and economic crisis, which are the opportunities for innovate towards sustainability? Do we know any offer/business model capable of creating (new) value, decoupling it from material and energy consumption? In other words, is there any alternative to significantly reduce the environmental impact of traditional production/consumption systems?.Design for Sustainabilit