Sustainable Innovation 08 - a structure well worth plugging!

Worth a read for thought leadership, insight and focus. Next years event is promoted as this years kicks off http://www.cfsd.org.uk/events/tspd12/index.html

EXCUSE CROSS-POSTINGS
Sustainable Innovation 08
Future Products, Technologies and Industries
27th - 28th October 2008
Malmo
Sweden

Organised by: The Centre for Sustainable Design
Sponsored by: The City of Malmo
Part of the 'Towards Sustainable Product Design' series of conferences

Background:Sustainability is a global imperative. Climate change is now 'top of mind' with widespread daily media coverage, stakeholder consensus on the science, highlighting of the economics by the Stern Review, and Al Gore's recent Oscar and Nobel Prize. This is leading to growing discussion over the need for a transformation towards low carbon economies and technologies. Coupled to this there are increasing pressures for significantly leaps in resource productivity and a movement to 'closed loop' solutions.

A recent book 'The Clean Tech Revolution' highlights a range of drivers for innovation:

* Costs: increasing price of oil
* Capital: growing investment flows
* China: massive energy and resource pressures
* Customers: significant consumer interest Opportunities are starting to emerge.

The market for sustainable technologies has been projected to be worth $800 billion by 2015. However, this figure undervalues the market as it does not account for the growing integration of renewable materials and alternative energy generation into products, technologies and buildings. Areas that will see significant growth include wind, solar, biomaterials, bio-energies, green buildings, sustainable mobility, smart grids, water filtration, and energy monitoring products and technologies.The clarion call is for innovation, innovation, innovation - short, medium and long-term. However, what do future sustainable products, technologies and industries look like?

Sustainable Innovation 08 will address this imperative with new visions, thinking and solutions.ConceptSustainable Innovation 08 will provide a platform to discuss in the future opportunities and challenges related to sustainable innovation, technology, product and service design and development. Sustainable Innovation 08 will include invited and refereed papers from academics, consultants, entrepreneurs, investors, technology providers,designers, sustainability, environment and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) managers as well as other business functions. The event will be a unique learning experience, networking space and an opportunity to think or even jump 'out of the box'.

Delegates will come globally from large companies, entrepreneurs, as well asacademia, government and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). The conference is supported by an international Advisory Board.Conference topicsSustainable Innovation 08 welcomes conceptual and research-based papers covering future solutions and thinking related to sustainable innovation, technology, product and service design and development. Papers focused on sustainable innovation related to the following topics are welcomed:

* Radical change
* Market transformation
* Sustainable Consumption & Production
* Low carbon economy
* Regional approaches
* Product policy
* Sustainable public procurement
* New business models
* Collaborations and partnerships
* Sustainable technologies
* Innovation processes
* Eco-entrepreneurship
* Supply chain management
* Product-service-systems (PSS)
* Management systems
* Organisational dimensions
* Case studiesBenefitsSustainable Innovation 08 will provide a range of benefits to speakers and delegates:
* Unique: forum for new ideas and concepts
* Leading-edge: presentations from key international researchers, practioners and policy-makers
* Content: new research, results and thinking
* Networking: opportunities to meet business, government and academia
* Track-record: over 1400 delegates from over 40 countries have attended previous 'Towards Sustainable Product Design' conferences

Submission detailsConference papers: please email, fax or post 500 words describing your proposed paper by 3rd March 2008. The paper will then be sent to the Advisory Board for evaluation and authors will be given feedback by the end of April 2008. The highest rated papers will be invited to present at the conference. Please only submit abstracts if you have budgets to attend the conference.

Contact
For more information on Sustainable Innovation 08 please contact: Martin Charter, Director, The Centre for Sustainable Design, University College for the Creative Arts, UK Tel: + 00 44 (0) 1252 892772 Fax: + 00 44 (0) 1252-892747 Email: mcharter@ucreative.ac.uk Website: http://www.cfsd.org.uk/