We need more than sustainable versions of everyday products. We need new products and services based on behaviour change.
Most companies are dismally bad at creating successful sustainable consumption. Today’s eco-attempts remain above all clumsy and expensive eco-versions of mainstream products. However real success lies in changing consumer behavior and creating new markets by designing unique products and services. Just like McDonald’s did with restaurants, Apple did with mobile computing, Yellow Tail with wine and Airbnb with hotels. Finding gatekeepers is key to creating new markets by behaviour change.
In this article we present a powerful way of combing behaviour change and new market creation. In this article we present how it resembles what Michael Porter and Mark Kramer describe as creating shared value by product innovation. We have worked with hundreds of professionals from over 30 leading Finnish companies to try out a new approach to cutting emissions by creating business.
The approach described in this strategy-report offers a way to bypass the paradox of green consumption by looking at markets instead of responsibilities or sustainability. Both eco-efficiencies and eco-niches marginalise the huge business opportunity there is in transforming our economies into a high performance economy.The real opportunity, we believe, is in the ability to create new markets by changing peoples’ behaviour.
Authors: Tuuli Kaskinen and Roope Mokka