The product a company create today will be the base to jump from tomorrow, nevertheless having a strategy of incremental or disruptive innovation. The invested resources needs to be re-harvested and re-used for constructing the new products. If the first product cannot bring value to the next, the next will be limited and also the next after that, requiring new material and lost know-how etc bringing high development costs. This is why successful engineers nowadays are equipped with strategies based on principles of sustainability and a toolbox for analyzing and structuring complex issues. In order to sustain and improve amazing designs we need to implement a strategic long-term thinking.
Suceesful companies manage to design products with high quality and providing high customer satisfaction through knowledge about needs and desires. They re-use resources and information to constantly re-create value. Management, technology and finance are interconnected in order to plan and build a system of continuous improvement and they are a part of the changing society. We can clearly see that companies like Nike, Samsung and IKEA are successfully learning and adapting to changes which makes them not just a part of the society, but also leaders and shapers. The long-term thinking is paying of through increased sales and attracting brilliant talents to the company, they are "in the know".
My latest reading was the 2012 Sustainability Report from Beckers. On page 6 they present the history of their impressive product development, they have managed to both develop existing products and laterally re-create value throughout the years! The report is also a great example of using the sustainability principles from The Natural Step for creating the baseline for further development. You can read more about it all right: here.
Cheers,
Andrej
