Barbie is a polarizing cultural icon. Over the last 60 years, the doll represented feminism’s greatest advances and worst challenges. Fans lauded Barbie for inspiring creativity and opportunity among generations of young girls, while foes criticized her unattainable, sexualized body, dependency on male attention, and excessive consumerist inspiration. Greta Gerwig inherited this ongoing controversy when agreeing to write and direct the Barbie movie. Would Gerwig animate admirers or succumb to foes? [...]@en

Sustainability efforts are increasingly leading to unintended consequences: perverse impacts of (business) interventions damaging social or environmental systems in unexpected ways.
Surprisingly, despite its persistent occurrence and relevance, unintended consequences as
phenomena are seldom investigated and remain a black box for business researchers and
practitioners. In this paper, I analyze a case of a social housing association in which a
sustainability strategy led to multiple unintended consequences, harming its tenants, the broader local community, and, ultimately, the social housing association and its members. Through retrospective and forward-looking co-creation, the management team and I collaboratively identified the mechanisms that made the sustainability-strategy-born ripple effects uncontrollable, escalating their unintended negative impact systemically across organizational and societal levels. The findings highlight the role of paradoxes in serving as a sentinel to the potential damage of sustainability-driven strategies. It does so by inviting corporate members to collectively listen to ‘undesirable’ futures and shifting communication ownership across different organization and community levels to prolong temporal attention beyond present and observable impacts. @en

To effectively develop, implement, and scale social innovations, innovation orchestrators must select appropriate innovation strategies. We propose that (responsible) innovation strategies should be tailored to the complexity of the problem they aim to address to avoid causing harm to society and the environment and instead regenerate them. Yet, tailoring innovation strategies to problem complexity remains challenging. In this paper, we ask how orchestrators can differentiate innovation problems and adapt their strategies accordingly. Through a mixed-method approach, incorporating action learning and a quasi-experimental design with pre-and post-tests, we co-developed an innovation problem-classification framework alongside a team of seasoned innovation orchestrators. We subsequently tested the framework's efficacy across three distinct participant groups: (1) innovation orchestrators with over five years of experience, (2) innovation orchestrators with 0-5 years of experience, and (3) entrepreneurship students with no orchestration experience. Our findings demonstrate that the training has positive significant effects on the accuracy of classification of innovation problem typologies. We provide insights into innovation problem classification and education practices to enhance responsible social innovation. @en

Angela Greco, assistant professor of innovation management at TU Delft, and Andrea Kerstens, a TNO scientist and PhD candidate in innovation management at TU Delft, draw on their experience with Syn.ikia, an EU-funded Innovation Living Lab for positive-energy building districts that leverage energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. Digital innovations like digital twins have been essential to unlocking positive-energy districts. For instance, digital twins that combine physical models of buildings and AI models of user behavior allow building districts to predict and optimize usage of excess solar energy. Their article presents three lessons learned from the project.@en

Despite the significant growth of the literature on adaptive reuse, little is known about the specific criteria unfolding throughout the different phases of the adaptive reuse decision-making process. To address this gap this paper aims to provide a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of the decision criteria for adaptive reuse throughout the adaptive reuse process. Through an integrative literature review with a systematic search strategy, three phases are substantiated: pre-project phase, preparation phase, and post-completion phase. This paper finds that despite the similarities between the different phases, with a predominant repetition of economic and architectural categories, more specific environmental decision criteria are still overlooked. The findings underscore the necessity for additional research on circularity within the adaptive reuse process, emphasizing the significance of the often overlooked implementation phase, crucial for practices like disassembly. By offering a novel process perspective on AR decision-making, this study contributes to the growing discourse on adaptive reuse and provides a basis for further enhancement of AR decision-making frameworks.

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The literature on business model innovation for sustainability is contradictory about the mechanisms unfolding in the context of organizational hybridity. Existing hybrid organizations are put under pressure to transform their business model to meet new social and environmental goals while ensuring financial sustainability. However, organizations with a strong social mission might be reluctant to change, having structured their business model to meet a particular social goal. Through an ethnographic study at a Dutch social housing association introducing an energy-neutral house as a new product, we investigate the key stages and enabling mechanisms for a sustainable business model change in which the social and environmental logics are conflicting. We analyze the underlying causal mechanisms in the process of business model innovation for sustainability. We show that the mechanisms responsible for organizational inertia in its conventional (negative) connotation, may in fact enable the intended positive and enduring social and environmental goals over time.@en

The transition to zero emission and energy positive buildings, neighbourhoods and communities is key to unlocking the EU's climate and energy ambitions by transforming both new and existing buildings into drivers of decarbonisation. This ambition is also reflected in the recent recast of the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EBPD1), which will be transposed to national legislation by the Member States by the end of May 2026.

Despite increasing maturity of the currently known enabling technologies, significant financial barriers hinder realising this potential at the necessary speed and scale. To address these challenges, several innovative demonstration projects have been developed across Europe as part of the EU’s research and innovation funding programmes.

To that ambition, this paper puts forward 10 key policy recommendations for national and regional policy makers for overcoming financial barriers for building renovation and transforming existing buildings into zero emission or positive energy neighbourhoods by 2050. The recommendations are based on experiences and learnings from 8 research and innovations projects in Europe, including 33 demonstration sites around Europe. While the EPBD covers both new buildings and building renovation, these projects and following recommendations made, largely focus on building renovation and transforming existing buildings into zero-emission or positive energy neighbourhoods.

The paper also presents a stakeholder matrix of key built environment actors in building renovation towards zero emission or positive energy buildings and neighbourhoods by 2050. The matrix presents the drivers, barriers and needs of each group to broaden the understanding of what needs to be regulated and who needs to be incentivised. @en

To achieve more desirable futures, we need to completely overhaul our current production, consumption, and innovation systems, requiring practices that go beyond merely understanding these systems and their problems. While the necessity for systemic changes to address grand societal challenges is widely supported across diverse schools of thought, systems innovation faces two significant limitations. First, many approaches to systems innovation focus primarily on understanding and mapping systems, seldom enabling robust change towards achieving desirable futures. Second, and relatedly, the literature on systems innovation (SI) is fragmented and built upon different fields with contradictory ontological assumptions—some suggest changes can be strategically planned and managed, while others fundamentally reject this notion. This fragmentation and these ontological contradictions hinder robust actions towards desirable futures by increasing the divide across disciplines, antagonizing the very core principles of system innovation that demand transdisciplinarity. Therefore, the central research question of this paper is: How can the integration and alignment of diverse approaches within systems innovation overcome current limitations and better support the transition towards desirable futures?
In this paper, we argue that the conceptualization of ‘systems innovation’ stems from three distinct approaches that have largely remained unconnected: 1) Research and innovation approaches, 2) Systems thinking approaches, and 3) Societal transition approaches. This paper aims to bring conceptual clarity by offering a comprehensive overview of these fields ultimately arriving at a re-conceptualization of systems innovation. While these different fields have largely developed independently, we find that their alignment facilitates a more cohesive and effective re-conceptualization of ‘systems innovation’.@en

Over the past two decades, research promoting a sustainable built environment has pioneered new horizons to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. Yet, these efforts are suffering from a significant theory-practice divide. This article offers three interconnected research themes to bridge this gap: 1. Distinguishing circularity practices across spatial and time scales; 2. Redesigning the value of design and its process; and 3. Learning from sister transitions for acceleration.@en

Wanneer een gebouw leeg komt te staan, worden vastgoedontwikkelaars, investeerders en eigenaren geconfronteerd met uiteenlopende eisen: in sommige gevallen is er grote behoefte aan snel financieel rendement, in andere gevallen vormt het behoud van historische waarden een uitdaging die maatregelen op het gebied van energie-efficiëntie bemoeilijkt. Dit heeft op de lange termijn negatieve gevolgen voor de Nederlandse vastgoedmarkt: het tempo van de energierenovatie ligt te laag en moet dringend worden verhoogd. Dit hoofdstuk introduceert een paradoxaal perspectief op de uitdagingen en tegengestelde belangen die de energietransitie blijven belemmeren. Een paradoxale benadering erkent dat deze spanningen onderling samenhangen en aanhoudend zijn. Een compromis is niet wenselijk, omdat het negeren van tegengestelde belangen tot negatieve onbedoelde gevolgen leidt. Dit hoofdstuk geeft ten eerste een overzicht van enkele van de belangrijkste uitdagingen die relevant zijn voor het bereiken van energie-efficiëntie bij de transformatie van bestaande gebouwen. Vervolgens wordt de paradoxtheorie belicht en de daaruit voorkomende benaderingen. Een paradoxperspectief is relevant voor zowel onderzoekers en managers die moeten omgaan met concurrerende eisen, als voor ontwerpers die paradoxen kunnen gebruiken als drijvende kracht om creatieve oplossingen te vinden. @en

Acknowledging the fundamental role of financing opportunities, this report (D.6.5) has multiple goals. First, D6.5 is aimed at providing an overview of the financial mechanisms, schemes, and resources that could play a role in accelerating the implementation of sustainable plus energy neighbourhoods (SPENs) across the four different countries in which the demo sites are situated. Second, it strives to propose a strategy to attract investors to realize the innovation(s) needed in a SPEN. And third, it consists of policy recommendations regarding the barriers and opportunities of the available financial schemes. These elements are particularly important for the realization of SPENs, since it is widely acknowledged that many investors, both public and private, are looking for new green and sustainable investment opportunities but these are often challenging to pursue due to the stakeholder diversity and complexity of innovations involved in the realization of a SPEN.@en

The realization of sustainable plus energy neighborhoods (SPENs) is key to achieving a carbon neutral built environment, and meeting the objectives of the green deal. Financial schemes have demonstrated effectiveness in driving the energy transition of individual buildings. However, the role of financial schemes in initiating the development of SPENs remains unclear. This study aims to address this research gap by investigating the extent to which existing financial schemes support the technological advancements and stakeholders involved in SPEN realization. The focus is on four European countries: Austria, The Netherlands, Norway, and Spain, where noteworthy SPEN initiatives have been established. This study investigates whether and how financial schemes facilitate SPEN development and address the neighborhood-level dynamics. Our research used a mixed-methods approach comprising a literature review, case studies, and interviews. Our findings shed light on two significant barriers within current schemes. Firstly, the schemes rarely incentivize collective energy sharing and may inadvertently impede individuals’ prosumerism. Secondly, they primarily favor individuals capable of making upfront capital investments, rendering them inaccessible to a large portion of European citizens. By identifying these limitations, our study highlights the need for policy adjustments and innovative financial mechanisms to overcome the barriers hindering SPEN implementation. Moreover, our research contributes to the broader understanding of sustainable urban development and offers insights that extend beyond the examined countries, aiding policymakers and stakeholders in other regions facing similar challenges.@en

To disentangle the complexity of organizational paradoxes while helping organizational members navigating them, researchers are showing a renewed interest in action research. Action research is a method particularly equipped to study paradoxes because of its elasticity in responding to emergence, and its interpretative nature. These allow researchers to reveal latent or emerging tensions, making them salient. In this paper we highlight the role of action-researchers in enabling effective navigation of organizational paradoxes, drawing attention on the potential dangers of this activity. While exposing paradoxes might bring new theoretical and practical insights, it can also result in negative unintended consequences. Our model highlights that, when alerting practitioners of the paradoxical nature of requirements, it is also necessary to build adequate response capacities, so that the action research process can help making paradoxes generative (i.e., opportunities for learning and innovation), rather than pragmatic (i.e., pathological, inducing vicious circles). We further outline concrete strategies to mitigate negative unintended consequences. Our conceptualization contributes to a critical approach to action research to study paradoxes to mitigate its inherent risks of causing unintended consequences. @en

The fields of sustainability and entrepreneurship share their dynamic processes, their high degree of uncertainty and complexity, and their endeavor on systemic impact. These inherent characteristics call researchers to engage in action research. Action research equips researchers with unique tools to navigate the volatility and complexity of sustainable entrepreneurship while simultaneously fostering its purpose and uncovering new theoretical insights. Yet, action research efforts fostering sustainable entrepreneurship are still emergent, and the mutual affinity between sustainable entrepreneurship and action research is still seldom addressed in the literature and often confused with other forms of collaborative knowledge production and problem-solving such as co-creation and consulting. In this chapter, we discuss the central principles of this form of academic knowledge production, their practices, and implications for sustainable entrepreneurship. We begin by defining action research and its unique methodological features. We then highlight research practices to address two fundamental but overlooked aspects of action research: value reciprocity and impact temporality. We illustrate these aspects by providing two cases of action research in a sustainable entrepreneurship context. This chapter offers directions for the researcher embarking into action research journeys aimed at fostering sustainable entrepreneurship.@en

In recent years, numerous public and private organizations have collaborated to address societal challenges through mission-driven innovation. Despite the many initiatives started with to tackle these challenges, many fail to achieve the impact they ought to deliver. Collaboration leaders frequently struggle to comprehend the complexity of their problem contexts deeply, hindering the development of effective solution strategies. Furthermore, the contexts and ecosystems of these mission-driven collaborations vary significantly. For instance, the shift to preventive healthcare presents different challenges compared to transitioning to a processing industry capable of managing periods of abundant renewable electrical energy. This study identifies various dimensions that can help delineate the complexity of these problems. These dimensions include convergent or divergent views on problems and solutions, ecosystem structure, stakeholder complexity, and stakeholder interdependence.@en

The Digital Building Logbook (DBL) team is currently in the process of identifying databases that are potentially relevant for the development of an EU portal where people would be able to search for information on individual buildings or a group of buildings meeting certain search criteria. In the first place, such an EU portal requires the existence of national databases or national portals connected to local data. To kickstart an EU portal, it makes sense to start with data for which databases are available in most EU Member States, for two reasons: 1) High potential involvement of many Member States from the beginning; 2) High learning potential for other countries to develop similar databases or national portals. During this project, the plan is to identify types of data that are available in most countries. The team will use this as a basis for proposing data items for which an EU portal should facilitate a search on individual buildings. The plan is to engage the Member States in the final selection of such data items. After agreement of the selected data items, Member States would ultimately be expected to ensure the availability of such data in a format and structure that can be recognised by the EU portal. After this agreement on data items, the DBL team will then develop a so-called ontology to define the formats and structure. The project identifies data that is relevant for different phases of the lifecycle of a building, in particular distinguishing between information from the design and construction phase and other data. Data from the design and construction phases are relatively static building-specific data available from technical plans or ideally BIM models. @en

Ethnographers embedded in organizational settings are confronted with competing expectations and tensions. By building on the scholarly work on paradox theory, we draw from our experiences conducting ethnography and from the narratives of other organizational ethnographers and offer insights on what we call “paradoxes of ethnography”. Additionally, we offer a guiding framework to aid organizational ethnographers, by increasing current understanding of the challenges and opportunities of ethnographic research. Thereby, we contribute to methodological conversations around ethnography and highlight coping mechanisms known in paradox research.@en

Innovation contests are increasingly used by businesses as an instrument for open innovation to address sustainability related questions. However, according to the open innovation literature, one of the main pitfalls of this approach can be the mismatch between the solutions proposed by non-experts and the companies’ capabilities to implement such solutions. We introduce the concept of collaborative innovation contests – where companies actively collaborate with non-experts – as a way to address this mismatch. Through participant observations, we analyse the process of a sustainability-oriented collaborative innovation contest guided by design-thinking. Our results indicated that the combination of an open innovation contest and design thinking could, through the creation of constant feedback loops, lead to increased collaboration between the contests participants, the companies proposing a challenge, and other relevant stakeholders. However, our results also highlighted trade-offs between the innovativeness of ideas, the alignment of solutions with firm capabilities and the resources needed for collaborative innovation contests. We conclude that, through the involvement of different stakeholders, their ideas and perspectives, collaborative innovation contests are a useful approach to generate a comprehensive understanding of the sustainability challenges companies face.@en

The customer journey of private homeowners towards deep renovation poses several challenges resulting in users not implementing energy efficiency measures. The conversion rate from orientation to implementation needs to increase and the whole renovation process to accelerate. Platforms are seen as playing a key role in accelerating renovations, acting as intermediary between the customer and the providers, reducing the friction between demand and supply. In this paper, we provide an overview of roles and impacts of digital platforms accelerating sustainability in the Dutch built environment. We analysed the outlook of 64 existing (digital) platforms to study their role in the customers journey. Our findings suggest that platforms offering individual guidance in the orientation phase of the customer journey are more likely to witness homeowners choosing for one or multiple energy efficient interventions as opposed to collective initiatives.@en

Society faces many wicked problems today such as climate change, income inequality, and biodiversity loss. Not only has business contributed to these problems but it also plays an important role in addressing them. Problems are “wicked” because they are embedded in complex systems that are continuously evolving. As no single actor can understand and solve a wicked problem, prior research has suggested that multiple actors, such as researchers and managers, come together to cocreate solutions. The cocreation process typically relies on the existing knowledge of the actors involved in the process. Yet, the dynamic nature of wicked problems requires actors to not just rely on cocreating on past knowledge but to cocreate tools that address future emerging or evolving problems. In this paper we seek to explain how researchers and managers can cocreate forward to address wicked problems. We illustrate the concept of cocreating forward through an innovation lab located at a Canadian business school. The lab brings together researchers, managers, and practitioners from various sectors to cocreate corporate innovation processes for addressing wicked problems. By cocreating forward, we show that research, learning, and practice need not be sequential but rather simultaneous activities.@en