Exploring Eco-Design Strategies in Italian Design-Driven Firms

Abstract

Given the growing emergence of environmental challenges, firms must reduce environmental impacts and achieve business performance. Hence, we investigate how environmental sustainability approaches relate to design-driven innovation (DDI) in the context of new product development, focusing on active design-oriented firms in Italy's industrial sector.  This paper, in particular, addresses to what extent eco approaches to design are adopted and connected to new product development in these      innovation-driven firms, and how such approaches relate to innovation, customer value creation, and business performance. These relationships are examined through an empirical investigation of the Italian manufacturing companies associated with the Industrial Design Association (ADI, Associazione del Design Industriale), from the entrepreneurial perspective. The study reveals three different clusters of companies with varying levels of adoption of eco-design approaches and a combination of such approaches. One cluster reveals the highest level of adoption of all the types of approaches, the second a high level of adoption of three types of approaches (durability, reduction, recycling), and a low level of adoption of the other three types (reparability, disassembling, regeneration) and a third cluster performs a medium level of adoption of all the types of approaches. Further, we discovered that from the entrepreneur's perspective, firms adopting design for durability and design for recycling approaches positively and significantly impact innovation, customer value and business performance. By identifying diverse eco-design approaches in design-oriented enterprises, the study offers a significant contribution to understanding the relationship between design-driven innovation and environmental sustainability.