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Reflets et perspectives de la vie économique
De Boeck Université

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2002 Reflets et perspectives de la vie économique

Sustainable Production : Challenges and objectives for EU Research Policy

Nigel Roome  [*] Ioannis Anastasiou  [*]
Plan de l'article
 
INTRODUCTION
 
 
The vision of sustainable production proposed in this article could contribute to change the way people think and act about Research Technology Development and Innovation (RTD&I).
Production systems have considerable economic, environmental and social significance. Presently, manufacturing contributes some 20% of European gross value added, employs around 30% of the European workforce and contributes about 25% of the waste, green house gasses and NO2 generated in Europe.
Competitiveness is a pillar of sustainable production. However, competitiveness and environmental performance have traditionally been viewed in terms of tradeoffs. The logic was that environmental improvements [internalising the externalities of production] could be achieved only at a cost to competitiveness.
Policy making by governments focused on striking an acceptable balance between interests – industry, employees, consumers and citizens, and social interests in environmental quality and quantity. However, this logic really applies to remedial responses to productions systems that were not designed with environmental impacts or limits in mind. This paper does not focus on trade-offs;
it seeks innovations that are synergistic.
Synergistic innovations are possible because of trends in manufacturing and business. Together with growing environmental awareness, these are changing the way people think about business. While many companies are still only concerned about environmental compliance, an increasing number are adopting approaches to environmental risk management. Other companies are beginning to pursue longterm sustainable development strategies.
In practice the true economic and environmental burdens of manufactured products include the direct effects arising from manufacturing processes, the material and energy contained in products, distribution and packaging, and the energy and material requirements from the use, disposal or re-use of products and their material elements. The implication is that « products in use », or « materials in use » have major impacts on the competitiveness and sustainability of the EU and its Member States.
Three cornerstone issues frame the approach of the challenge of sustainable production adopted here :
  • The present European system of production is not sustainable and has not begun to address in a substantive way how competitiveness can be achieved within the framework of sustainability and at the same time maintain an acceptable quality of life.
  • Current trends in the modernisation of production have the potential to improve competitiveness and to reduce environmental impacts but are unlikely to bring production, and the use of products, within the framework of sustainability.
  • Present EU policies and actions for RTD&I might improve environmental performance but will not foster the transformations in production that are required to achieve competitiveness within the framework of sustainability during the prospective period.
The linear concept of « efficiency » (seeking lower inputs for a given activity) can contribute to this approach but the main focus is placed on the concept of « sufficiency », concerned with the search for, and implementation of, new ways to meet users’ needs (notably through the provision of services that meet needs through the performance of material products). The concept of sufficiency came into focus because it was seen as having the greatest potential in securing sustainable development during the prospective period to 2020. The paper summarises conclusions and recommendations concerning the objectives, scope, content and instruments of appropriate RTD&I policies, which could contribute to competitive and sustainable European production systems in the period to 2020.
 
CHALLENGES AND THE WAY FORWARD
 
 
Integrated approach within socio-technical systems
The point of departure is that competitive and sustainable production can be achieved only if innovation arises out of a more integrated arena than at present.
This reorientation of research, technology and innovation reflects the fact that technologies do not exist in isolation. Technologies connect to other technologies and these ‘technological sets’ are embedded in socio-technical systems, which span the activities of production and consumption. Socio-technical systems, in turn, involve networks of actors, many of whom depend on the technologies in the system for their economic position or status. Interdependencies between actors and between actors and technologies create rigidities and obstacles that constrain technological and social innovation.
Sustainable production is a key component of sustainable development, with its environmental, social and economic dimensions. Sustainable development should not be confused with environmental management. Environmental management invariably seeks improvements in performance without reference to environmental limits, whereas sustainable development fosters human activities within the carrying capacity or environmental limits of the planet, now and in the future, at all scales from local to global. Moreover, sustainable development has a social dimension, paying attention to the quality of life, defined by factors such as the quality of work and social cohesion.
Sustainable development is a response to three types of problem, which directly or indirectly affect the EU and its Member States. They are :
  • problems of affluence (the environmental consequences of industrialisation in developed economies and the life-styles of their citizens); they arise from the patterns of production and consumption established within the EU and its
  • Member States;
  • problems of transition (the environmental and social problems arising from the process of economic development in rapidly industrialising countries); they are found in many of the accession countries;
  • problems of poverty and population (invoked by the environmental, social and economic issues of underdevelopment) which are found in pockets of the
  • EU and neighbouring states, and a number of countries with which the EU trades.
Sustainability requires context-breaking innovation
The route to innovation, based on a more integrated arena and a concern for sufficiency, will lead to new ways of providing for human needs and the generation of market opportunities. A number of companies recognise that sustainability strategies offer new opportunities as managers try to be competitive within environmental limits and social constraints. These emerging strategies demand collaborative approaches to knowledge development, organisational learning and joint action.
New orientations in manufacturing support this approach. For example, the traditional focus on products is being replaced by the concept of product services (selling flooring services rather than carpets, paying for clean clothes services rather than buying washing machines, etc.). In this view, human needs are met through performance of products rather than the product itself. Product-services mean it is no longer necessary to sell customers products, which they then own.
If needs are met through the performance provided by products, then it is possible for manufacturers to retain ownership of the material locked in their products and to sell performance to the consumer. When manufacturers retain ownership of the material content of products they assume a « material stewardship philosophy » becoming more concerned about the durability and maintenance costs of products, and, managing the asset value of materials locked in products. Consumers become more concerned about the services and performance that meet their needs and the costs of supporting those needs. This approach places new demands on human and organisational capabilities available to producers.
The design challenge for manufacturers is to understand better the service performance of products, customer requirements and environmental impacts. The challenge for business is to find competitive solutions within environmental limits and in a socially responsible manner. The challenge for innovation systems is to create the platforms that enable new product service systems to be designed and implemented through the active participation of the many key actors.
The production sector’s contribution to innovation that is competitive and sustainable suggests a process that :
  • involves many actors in choosing technological options and socio-technical solutions,
  • adopts a long-term orientation that avoids irreversibilities caused by solution lock-in, reducing the burden of distribution and recovery of materials through the design of processes, supply chains and value networks.
  • It involves assessments of :
  • economic, environmental and social impacts over the life-cycle of the innovation and system,
  • efficiency in the use of resources in relation to value added through products,
  • links between technologies and systems change.
The product/service/social innovations emerging from this process are likely to be :
  • light, in terms of resource intensities and productivity,
  • flexible, in terms of use and multi-functionality,
  • durable, adaptive, and focused on performance [in the sense that performance is more important than material product, and includes the liabilities of performance].
A way forward for manufacturing and production
Production in Europe and globally is adopting two archetypes – efficiency and sufficiency. The characteristics of these archetypes are :
  • Traditional efficiency strategies involve the modernisation of material throughput in linear industrial systems [which the reader might view as similar to managing the flow of a river]. Modernisation involves manufacturers in optimising production processes up to the point of sale and the redesign of products. For example, manufacturing processes are controlled for raw material utilisation, process regularity, and optimal operational performance. Products have high of known quality and minimum of variations. Gains in environmental impact arise from the reduction of waste, elimination of pollution and through R&D that reduces or eliminates hazardous and polluting substances, miniaturises product components or reduces weight. Environmental modernisation is supported by emerging concepts e.g. eco-efficiency, factor 4/10, material recycling, and product stewardship.
  • Modernisation strategies have an important role in more radical changes taking place in how we think about production. Modernisation is revising our concepts of production and consumption, recycling and waste treatment. It draws environmental management techniques, such as life-cycle analysis. This approach is strongly influenced by hard sciences, such as the material and life sciences.
  • Emerging, context breaking manufacturing strategies are based on the sale of performance and use. Sufficiency strategies correspond to a circular or loop economy [which the reader might view as similar to managing the level a lake].
  • They focus producers on the sale of performance and optimisation of extended producer responsibilities. Emphasis on performance and the sale of utilisation value creates demand for competence in managing the value of the assets retained in material products. It shifts focus from production to production and consumption. Here life-cycle analysis involves economic, social and environmental assessments. It encourages a preventative engineering approach in which technical systems are designed for continued operation in the case of component failure – this includes resilience and redundancy.
Technologies are required but so too are innovations in networks of actors, marketing and new ways of providing performance with others, instead of just selling products. New relationships and arrangements between actors within the system have to be established and maintained together with new technological configurations. New equipment and production methods are required, while consumers need to change their routines and life-styles [for example – leasing/ renting rather than buying and owning material products]. Equipment becomes more modern [competitive] as a way to attract consumers, but, there is a need to promote modular system design and standardisation of components, closed material loop manufacture and redistribution logistics, in order to avoid rebound effects from shorter product life-times. The approach is strongly determined by soft skills as well as hard sciences.
The table below describes further features of these archetypes. The archetypes are not alternatives. It is possible to envision a company participating in innovations that draw on both strategies. The archetypes are distinguished more by reference to the extent of change, the scope of participation and the potential for innovation.
The expert group suggests that competitive and sustainable production ultimately requires a shift toward sufficiency in production and consumption systems, although modernisation strategies based on efficiency are presently more common.
Sufficiency is concerned with the search for, and implementation of, new ways to meet human needs. Sufficiency addresses the services required to meet needs and the performance in use of material products. This is seen as a proper focus of future EU RTD&I policies and actions that strive for competitiveness and within a framework of sustainability.


IMGIMGSelling Performance versus Selling P...IMGIMF
Selling Performance versus Selling Products Efficiency Strategy Sale of a product [industrial economy] The object of the sale is a product Liability of the seller for the manufacturing quality [defects] Payment is due for and at the transfer of the property rights [« as is where is » – principle] Work can be produced centrally/globally [production], products can be stored, re-sold, exchanged Property rights and liability are transferred to the buyer Advantages for buyer : – right to a possible increase in value – status value as when buying performance Disadvantages for buyer : – zero flexibility in utilisation – own knowledge necessary [driver licence] – no cost guarantee – full risk for operation and disposal Marketing strategy = publicity, sponsoring Central notion of value : high short-term exchange value at the point of sale. Sufficiency Strategy Sale of a performance [service economy] The object of the sale is performance, customer satisfaction is the result Liability of the seller for the quality of the performance [usefulness] Payment is due pro rata if and when the performance is delivered [« no fun no money » – principle] Work has to be produced in situ [service], around the clock, no storage or exchange possible Property rights and liability remain with the fleet manager Advantages for the user : – high flexibility in utilisation – little own knowledge necessary – cost guarantee per unit of performance – zero risk – status symbol as when buying product Disadvantages for user : – no right to a possible increase in value Marketing strategy = customer service Central notion of value : constant utilisation value over long-term utilisation period. Source: The Product-Life Institute, Geneva
The Product-Life Institute, Geneva

Overall policy challenge
The overall challenge for policy is to establish a climate that fosters and supports sufficiency strategies. This will involve the redesign of production systems, distribution systems, consumption systems as well as integrated production, distribution and consumption systems.
This will involve new platforms for participation by actors to encourage the development of modern technology and the reorganisation of socio-technical systems and social structures. It requires drivers as powerful as the ones that created the unsustainable practices of the past and present. This will impact the mix of policies [for example taxes, incentives, capital write-offs and agreements for trade] that support change. It requires multi-disciplinary, multi-sectoral, technical and managerial capabilities. EU RTD&I should stimulate these platforms and encourage a better, and more widespread, understanding of the overall process described above and its introduction into education and practice. Present RTD&I policy, with its emphasis on collaborative projects, is not seen as providing a basis to foster and secure sufficiency strategies. RTD&I policies and actions therefore need to be redesigned. And the mix of existing policies that present obstacles to sufficiency need to be challenged and changed. We highlight some of the implications of this overall challenge :
Institutional and organisational obstacles to these processes, including :
  • Differences in management styles and cultures in Europe [this obstacle should not be overcome by reducing the diversity of the European system, as diversity is a potential source of innovation].
  • Differences in cultural and linguistic approaches to collaborative processes.
  • Lack of coherence and perverse incentives in the overall mix of policies [for example taxes, subsidies, capital write-offs, and trade agreements are often contradictory and do not support sufficiency and sometimes not even economic and environmental efficiency].
  • Weak participation by the private sector in public policy making and weak collaboration between private and non-governmental interests.
  • Relatively low levels of co-operation and collaboration in research and innovation.
  • Absence of initiatives that bring together potential partners across sectors and interests.
  • Inability of consumer groups and other actors to engage effectively in learning and innovation programs.
  • Poor mechanisms to diffuse good practice in learning and knowledge development.
  • Continuing confusion between environmental management and sustainable development.
Education and life-long learning for change, since the education system can foster the capabilities that support designs for sufficiency. As the character of sustainability and the conditions for competition are constantly changing there is a need to support life-long learning for change. There are also several types of changes required in the education system [1]. Formal education can raise awareness of the links between environmental, social and economic issues at all levels. However, evidence suggests that experiential learning is more valuable than formal classroom teaching in the development of the capabilities set out above. Schools and universities therefore need to engage with partners in a variety of sectors to provide learning experiences for students, enabling them to develop and perpetuate these skills. Business has a role to play as partner, educator and learner.
 
OBJECTIVES AND SCOPE OF RTD&I POLICY
 
 
Competitive and Sustainable (C&S) production systems in Europe will involve a more integrated arena for innovation having many dimensions :
  • It requires the redesign of technologies and socio-technical systems, spanning both production and consumption, involving many actors in identifying and working towards purposeful change.
  • It involves assessment of the economic, environmental and social performance of designs as well as the connection of global pressures and local conditions.
This redesign has implications for the direction of RTD&I policies and actions in Europe. The current approach to RTD&I at the EU level, with its emphasis on collaborative research projects, will not realise the integration and real gains that are necessary. It suggests a new focus for EU RTD&I policies and actions to foster transformation of socio-technical systems through sufficiency strategies. This will involve a new approach based on the organisation and integration of systems, rather than technologies on their own, the resolution of a range of obstacles in present innovation systems and existing socio-technical systems. Current trends in the modernisation of production are unlikely to generate these solutions spontaneously; this paper therefore seeks to define ways in which the scope of the decision-making process should be redesigned. It establishes :
(a) the rationale for public policy support for technological innovation targeting
C&S EU production based on sufficiency;
(b) the role and contribution of science and research, which has a central place in more C&S production systems; and (c) the requirements that support and foster a better-integrated approach to RTD&I.
(a) Rationale for Public Policy Support
  • The need for skills to integrate social, environmental and economic issues.
  • The need to hasten the generation of technologies, knowledge and capabilities required.
  • Support for the managerial and institutional capabilities.
  • Securing production with a greater portion of industrial added value from the service value.
  • Promoting organisational clusters and networks with distinctive manufacturing competencies.
  • Integration of production, from design through to distribution.
  • Integration of production and consumption to facilitate rapid modernisation.
  • Generating and demonstrating new ideas and new designs.
  • Supporting the overarching objective to maintain the political, economic, social and environmental security and integrity of the EU zone, its Member States and its neighbours.
(b) Role and Contribution of Science and Research
Natural and Physical Sciences and Research
Base-line studies are required of the cause/effect relationships between the physical aspects of environmental problems, such as climate change. They contribute to our understanding of the effects of current activities on fundamental natural and physical processes and the search for damage limiting remedies.
Developments in sustainable chemistry and new materials contribute to pollution – and waste-free materials, with properties of durability, reusability or lowenergy manufacture. Research supports miniaturisation and the development of molecular construction of materials as well as improved characteristics for recycling and re-manufacture. It contributes to the development of new energy sources and distribution formats. Emerging areas are biotechnology and materials in relation to nano-technology, while energy research is needed on fuel cells, renewables, micropower systems.
Social Science Research
Conventionally, RTD&I programmes encourage competition among firms, research institutes and other parts of the innovation system. What is needed, however, is research that aims to support the sharing of new knowledge, identifying modes of co-operation, collaboration and participation by actors in innovation systems.
Social science should contribute more to capacity building and understanding the barriers to innovation and change through : development of techniques, processes and strategies for the educational development and training of systems integrators and the advancement of process skills; action research on the development of different models of public [political] and private [firm] decisionmaking; the contribution of demonstration projects and illustrations of good practice as a basis for behaviour change; understanding of public scepticism about business and government, particularly, the role Non-Government Organisations [NGOs] as sources of information or partners in governance.
Multi-disciplinary Science and Research
Business and public policy have failed to anticipate and mediate the undesired consequences of change. There has been a general inability to promote more sustainable products and services where changes in behaviour or routines are required. What is missing is an understanding of risk, precaution and its relationship to change. Multidisciplinary research into more precautionary approaches to RTD is required, as well as new indicators of progress.
Strategies for sufficiency require scenarios and foresight methodologies. These multi-disciplinary procedures examine alternative futures, and use back-casting techniques to identify stepping stones and pathways to desired futures. They include assessments of alternate pathways using life-cycle analytic approaches to identify environmental, economic and social aspects of alternate pathways and overall systems change; and technology gap assessments.
There is a need to develop the means to scrutinise and better discuss the social and environmental consequences of new technologies and govern the arising scientific and social uncertainties and ethical concerns. This should happen at an early stage in their development.
(c) Requirements that support and foster a better integrated approach to RTD&I
These requirements to developing a more integrated approach need to combine results from a number of policy fields.
Solving unmet societal/human needs rather than technological bottlenecks
The problem-solving approach is important in focusing RTD&I actions. Yet, it is necessary to develop more open, problem-finding approaches of unmet societal/ human needs, with problem-solving of technological bottlenecks a secondary feature of the same type of multi-actor process. This approach should be conducted at the level of the socio-technical systems rather than focus on individual technologies.
Creating Appropriate Drivers and Policy-Mix
The report’s focus on production and consumption, bridged by the concept of the socio-technical systems and the network of actors in those systems, means that the unit of analysis, and the focus of future RTD&I policy as we see it, is technology in use. Market drivers and the mix of policies have specific impacts on individual socio-technical systems, which should be analysed in detail. Yet industrial and business development policy will have to be tailored for individual sectors depending on their specific impacts on sustainable development. Alignment of their objectives with general environmental policies and industrial policies at both national and EU level is an important dimension of the policy mix. This is not a trivial task.
Communicating about alternative options
Economic instruments have the potential to stimulate the market. However, to be successful in delivering behavioural change, consumers need to have clear messages about alternative options for sustainable consumption. Consumers are not persuaded by price alone. This path toward alternative options will be supported if Governments have a clear and consistent direction for policy that encourages companies and individuals to invest in alternative solutions. For example, the social acceptability of economic instruments to change behaviour – such as water metering and fuel tax – depend on public confidence, which, in turn, depend on the Government’s ability to communicate these alternative options.
Capacity Building
Maintaining intensive communication between actors is also critical to capacity building and in the design and implementation of solutions. ICT and other enabling technologies play a role, as do new horizontal and vertical lines of communication between organisations and individual actors. Capacity building should be focused on technologies and their application in social systems. The decline in interest in physical sciences in schools in Europe needs to be arrested while programme rules in EU research programmes should be reviewed to ensure participation of unconventional researchers and thinkers to open the scope for multi-disciplinary approaches and change the image of scientists.
International RTD&I Objectives for Competitive and Sustainable Production
RTD&I for competitive and sustainable production is an important element of the EU’s international policy given the global dimension of many problems addressed by sustainable development. International co-operation and collaboration is thus a particularly clear imperative in this field. Examples are : co-operation with other developed, industrial economies on key global challenges of industrial development based on sufficiency; concerted bilateral or multilateral support to developing countries to promote pathways to development based on sufficiency; to tailor solutions and to commit to capacity building.
 
CONTENT AND INSTRUMENTS OF RTD&I POLICY
 
 
The transition envisioned here requires migration from a culture of material throughput to one of sufficiency as the basis for growth through value added. A broader and more flexible set of policy instruments is needed in support of the shift to sufficiency. Accelerating the shift toward sufficiency requires broader, more flexible, policy instruments than are provided by the present support for collaborative R&D projects. For example through :
  • 100% funding of search exercises for key socio-technical systems to generate ideas about, and commitments to, sufficiency solutions through the moderation of material consumption and sustainable product service offerings.
  • Funding support for remodelling R&D infrastructure and the innovation system to reflect the new demands for knowledge, the new context for interaction with industry and the requirements for new skills and competencies.
  • Establishment of international competence networks as a basis for research and the dissemination of research results. These networks should be set up for a period of 5-10 years [maximum], equipped with a [relatively] stable budget and working to a remit that emphasises communications. These competence networks should form nodes in a broad Europe-wide communications and co-operation network.
  • Restructuring RTD&I policy administration so it reflects the participative processes and experiential learning capacity that are being encouraged for
  • RTD&I – i.e. policy administration should be multi-disciplinary and participative, experimental and possibly open to continuous interaction with EU experts and supported RTD&I partnerships. This might involve experimentation with continuous process evaluation and mid-term corrections in projects.
This will affect public policy, business management and public attitudes. It will require a suite of policy instruments that create a climate in which processes for learning and collaboration, good practice and goals are cultivated for individual socio-technical systems, rather, than applying standards, conformance and outcomes. Encouragement of appropriate financing mechanisms to support the innovation effort will also be an important instrument of public policy. These will have to be more socio-technical system and area specific.
A « design framework » of six concurrent processes is proposed as a response to the deficiencies of the present system of RTD&I and the obstacles to sufficiency in Europe. These are :
Understanding Socio-Technical Systems :
  • Participative forums to establish the key actors involved in specific socio-technical systems, and to identify and map the specific characteristics of those systems together with actors’ needs and interests.
  • Establishing the basis for inputs and contributions by actors to collaborative action.
Generating of ideas for innovative approaches to sufficiency strategies for selected socio-technical systems :
  • Foresight forums through which societal groups generate new ideas and learn about the expectation of relevant actors for competitiveness within the framework of sustainability in relation to specific socio-technical systems.
  • Maximum encouragement for maverick, or wild card [2], approaches to RTD&I through a continuously open call within the theme Competitive and Sustainable Development.
  • Specific funds designated for innovations, which have merit (for example addressing multi-disciplinary, potentially high value-added ideas) but do not meet traditional criteria.
Resolving the barriers to change and establishing the feasibility of solutions :
  • Addressing knowledge transfer problems and organisational barriers for companies, which want to adopt competitive strategies for sufficiency.
  • Establishing appropriate cost-accounting and financial control mechanisms that reflect the true economics of material recovery and material assets held in product-related service performance systems.
  • Promoting schemes to develop competence in designing for service~performance rather than in producing products so workers can become service providers.
  • Supporting inter-firm co-operation using information technology & knowledge management and logistics, especially on reverse supply chains and take-back schemes.
  • Establishing and resolving barriers arising from the demand for venture capital oriented toward competitive sustainable development projects.
  • Identifying a policy mix that supports sufficiency in specific socio-technical systems.
Supporting the development and adoption of enabling technologies :
  • Emphasising basic science and research in technologies, which allow decentralisation of systems. Highlighted areas are information and communication technologies, biotechnology and micro and nano-technologies. These represent important enabling technologies in the areas of dematerialization and resource productivity.
Engaging a variety of relevant actors to participate in the process of learning and change :
  • Incorporating societal and environmental actors together with business managers in programme committees of the Framework Programme.
  • Broadening the knowledge base on sustainability innovation mechanisms in manufacturing practice. Carry out socio-economic research on sustainability management and innovation management within competitive frameworks as well as introduce a voucher system for societal groups, which allows them – if collaborating – to give research grants.
  • Developing the contribution of socio-economic experts as a support input/ vision to RTD&I on social needs.
  • Training participants in effective multi-actor procedures and the facilitation of processes.
Demonstrating and disseminating these processes and their outcomes to others :
  • Assessing and developing a policy-mix that encompasses legislation and taxation that allows technical alternatives [through R&D for technology] to be examined in advance of drafting directives etc.
  • R&D in hard sciences in support of areas of public sector spending where the objective is the promotion of competitive and sustainable solutions.
  • Action research on the demonstration of the principles for future production systems in action, and demonstration of participation in action.
  • Multi-actor Implementation Forums for RTD&I and sustainability combined with competitiveness at levels appropriate to specific socio-technical systems.
  • Database and resource guides on good practices of SMEs involved in competitive approaches to sufficiency [particularly for companies not in existing networks].
  • Socio-economic shadowing of the process of mainstream RTD&I research with monitoring in real time, with the objective of presenting challenges, learning and disseminating rather than evaluating policy implementation.
 
CONCLUSIONS
 
 
What is argued here is how a context-breaking innovation process could create conditions in which competitiveness and sustainable development performance, which have often been viewed in terms of trade-offs, could become mutually supportive. Production cannot be sustainable if consumption is not sustainable.
The only way to deal with this problem is to address socio-technical systems that span both production and consumption.
The crucial link with competitiveness can be ensured through classical efficiency strategies and environmental modernisation, and supported by concepts such as eco-efficiency. However, this is not enough to ensure that production and consumption activities develop within the framework of sustainability. Therefore, the concept of sufficiency, corresponding to a circular or loop economy, is a concept that deserves seriously consideration, because it opens up the possibility to identify new ways to do things that go beyond the simple issue of the efficiency of existing practices. It also raises the question about how to meet needs rather than how to improve existing ways to meet needs.
This is where the objectives and scope of RDT&I are to be redefined in order to establish a competitive and sustainable European production system in the future.
As the need for a fundamental redefinition is not yet felt by all actors, the rationale for public support, the role and contribution of science and research, and the specific requirements to foster the more integrated approach are set out. However, the core proposal concerns the content and instruments of RTD&I Policy.
The design framework of six concurrent processes (as well as all the rest of the approach proposed in this article) should be guided by the principles of lightness, flexibility, durability, adaptability, and closed material loops. Developing these processes in RTD&I and implementing these principles will affect the material character of the systems that emerge from the design process, with the processes used to envision, assess and promote those systems based on mutual learning and joint action.
 
NOTES
 
[*] Nigel ROOME is professor of Sustainable Entreprise and Transformation at the Faculty of Social Science at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Ioannis ANASTASIU is scientific officer at the Directorate General of Research of the European Commission and works at the Policy Issues Unit of the Industrial Technologies Directorate. This article summarises the report produced by the Expert Group (EG) on Sustainable Production established by the European Commission using external experts from around Europe. The EG met six times in 2000-01 to consider the requirements for competitive and sustainable (C&S) production systems in Europe and the implications for Research Technology Development and Innovation (RTD&I). It provides forward-looking, strategic guidance for EU policies and actions in support of RTD&I in relation to production and related service industry sectors. It specifically addresses how RTD&I can contribute to competitive and sustainable European production systems in the period to 2020. The study was initiated and funded by the « Competitive and Sustainable Growth » Programme of the EU Research Directorate. The contents of this article, as a summary of the report, are the sole responsibility of the expert group, the views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Commission. Nigel Roome was the Chairman and Rapporteur of the Expert group.
[1] These changes in educational programmes, particularly, but not exclusively, in engineering, are described in the report.
[2] Maverick, or wild card approaches are unconventional approaches, outside of the main stream and normal procedures, which allow for uncommon, and often high-value ideas to emerge.
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Nigel ROOME is professor of Sustainable Entreprise and Tran...
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These changes in educational programmes, particularly, but ...
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Maverick, or wild card approaches are unconventional approa...
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