Breaking Down Barriers: The Psychology of Sustainable Innovation Implementation
By Nalini Heinmüller - Last edited: 10. May 2023
Innovation is an essential component of creating a sustainable future, but the journey towards successful implementation can be riddled with obstacles. While these barriers are often attributed to practical issues such as resource availability, market opportunities, and regulatory compliance, these challenges can often be traced back to psychological factors that are often overlooked.
Inspired by psychological research, this blog explores the psychological barriers that innovators may face when scaling up sustainable innovations, from the idea creation process to aligning stakeholder values and finding clients. As we navigate this journey, we also discuss potential solutions to tackle these challenges and highlight how organisations like the Sustainable Scale-up Foundation can act as a valuable resource for innovators to overcome these obstacles and achieve sustainable growth.
Sustainable vs. Traditional Innovation
Sustainable innovation is like traditional innovation's younger and trendy sibling. It not only focuses on achieving long-term economic success but creates shared value by considering the long-term societal and environmental impacts. According to a Harvard Business Review article, "in the future, only companies that make sustainability a goal will achieve competitive advantage." For example, relying on non-renewable sources for energy is not sustainable in the long term. Changing energy systems is not only necessary but also an opportunity to innovate markets as it can lower a company’s costs, improve their credibility, and form better relationships with stakeholders, investors and customers.
Psychology as the Source of Innovation Barriers
Although switching towards sustainable innovations seems like a rational decision to make, people and companies often struggle with implementation. The process of innovation is complex, involving creativity, knowledge, and openness to generate new ideas. Nevertheless, it also requires entrepreneurship and resilience to navigate uncertainty and seize windows of opportunities, not just knowledge.
According to Prof. Dr. Luc Soete, we must change our perception of innovation from an act of intellect to an act of will. However, converting intentions into actions presents a significant challenge, particularly in the realm of sustainability practices. This challenge is encapsulated in the concept of the "Intention-Action” gap, which emphasises the importance of empowering individuals and making them committed to take action, rather than merely wishing to do so.
“Climate targets alone will not achieve climate protection. We do not have a knowledge problem, but an implementation problem.”
While external factors such as resources, market opportunities, and regulations may be the more obvious and tangible implementation barriers, internal psychological factors can underlie these practical barriers and hinder the innovation process.
An Innovators Emotional Climate
Imagine that you have been tasked with creating a new product that will revolutionise the market. You have all the knowledge and creativity needed to generate new ideas and solve complex problems, but what other qualities are necessary to bring your innovation to life? From an innovator’s perspective, certain traits and mindsets are beneficial or necessary for innovation, including seeing oneself as an innovator and understanding the needs and values of those being innovated for. While some have cited that innovativeness is a state of mind that combines a restless dissatisfaction with the current situation with curiosity, creativity, and excitement about finding innovative solutions, Ph.D. Eric Haseltine adds that creativity and divergent thinking alone is not sufficient for successfully scaling up innovations; it also requires an ability to motivate behaviour change and create trusting relationships to promote psychological safety within the team.
“If you look at history, innovation doesn’t come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect.”
Innovators are not independent geniuses but come from social scenes where passion, knowledge, and creative role identity are encouraged. An emotional climate within the team characterised by team vision, participatory safety, and support allows people to risk the behaviour change necessary for innovations to succeed. This can be achieved by creating environments where ideas can connect, such as informal alliances built in restaurants, bars, or other settings that allow individuals to let down their guards, relax, and even form friendships that lead to the psychological safety needed to advance ideas and try new approaches. Haseltine's equation for fostering innovation in one's world is:
Unfortunately, you are dependent on other people’s opinion
The journey towards sustainable innovation is not just about the innovators themselves - it's about the attitudes, norms, and beliefs in their own behaviour and decisions to bring about change in the policymakers, investors, and clients who hold the keys to success. The psychological factors of each party must align with the innovation, or it can be a major roadblock when moving forward with one’s idea.
Even the most brilliant and sustainable ideas can be met with resistance from those who are comfortable with the status quo or feel threatened by the unknown. As humans, we tend to stick to what we know and resist change, even if it could lead to a better future. This resistance can take many forms, from stakeholders who are reluctant to adopt or invest in new ideas because of potential financial risk, a lack of understanding, familiarity, or perceived benefits. Additionally, resistance can arise due to cultural or social norms that clash with the innovation’s goals.
Tesla’s story serves as a perfect example of this struggle. As a pioneer in electric vehicles, they encountered resistance from policymakers who were hesitant to allow them to sell their cars directly to customers in certain states in the United States, influenced by traditional car dealerships and their lobbyists. While Tesla aimed to sell their vehicles directly to customers to reduce uncertainty and explain the advantages of their cars, they still faced challenges in engaging, building trust, and gaining understanding from other stakeholders. This conflicting attitude eventually led to a legal battle and delayed Tesla's ability to scale up its innovation as planned in 2010.
Climate and Innovation Adaptation
Getting everyone on the same page requires increasing people’s adaptive capacity and helping them anticipate the long-term impacts of climate change. In the anthology “The Square”, leading scholars suggest the use of place-based innovation, which creates a sanctuary of trust, caring, and timely partnerships. By making the consequences of climate change more directly felt, more people are likely to be emotionally involved and motivated to take action. A bottom-up entrepreneurial discovery process can complement the flexibility, learning, and engagement of relevant stakeholders and their motivations. This process can help recognise and address the concerns of citizens, regions, and other relevant parties. It's crucial to be transparent with openly accessible data that is easily understandable to increase people's awareness of the long-term risks if transformative innovation policy does not advance. Working with local contacts and finding ways to link security and innovation can bring mutual benefits.
However when environmental issues seem abstract and distant, providing personal audits can be an effective strategy to show the positive or negative impacts of daily choices on the environment, making sustainability more tangible and relevant. Such an approach can spark surprise and make sustainability a more personal issue, leading to better decision-making and a greater willingness to take action.
As we delve deeper into the topic of sustainable innovation, we discover the vital role that effective leadership can play in climate adaptation. A research article highlighted several leadership traits that can be particularly useful in navigating the complexity of the implementation process. A political-administrative leader needs to take decisions on a vision and strategy for climate change adaptation, make necessary resources available, and monitor progress. Having a vision is a good first step for innovators as it can create resilience against potential fallbacks. By having a story to hold on to that is supported by others can help sustain momentum to translate these visions into action.
As innovation is often hit by unpredictable interactions between individuals in the networks, an adaptive leadership function needs to respond to these by holding up a growth mindset and seeking opportunities that allows parties to develop new ideas and experiment with new approaches. An enabling leader can facilitate collaboration and cooperation among stakeholders by highlighting each parties strengths and increase the sense of urgency. A connective leader builds networks and establishes relationships across different organisations, policy levels, actors, and sectors in the public and private domains. Finally, a disseminative leader plays a crucial role in translating newly developed ideas and practices into formal policies and institutions. By embodying these traits, a leader can effectively inspire people with their innovation on an organisational level and create a significant impact within their network.
Getting Your First Client
Securing the first clients is an essential step towards the success of innovation implementation. For investors, the presence of an innovation’s first client can serve as a crucial factor in their decision to fund it. However, understanding potential clients and convincing them of the necessity of something they didn’t know they needed can pose yet another challenge.
According to research, consumer resistance can stem from conflicting usage patterns, perceived risks, or opposition to traditions and norms. Economic and functional risks, in particular, can be strong deterrents and should be carefully considered when communicating with clients. To combat this, it's important to understand which risks your audience is particularly vulnerable to and implement risk reduction strategies. This can involve providing readily available knowledge about risks and solutions, or even showcasing the innovation's potential through virtual demonstrations. Building trust in the safety and efficacy of the innovation is also crucial, and having experts and independent sources test it is essential to providing reliable information. In cases where existing usage patterns conflict with the client's current lifestyle, solutions such as before and after demonstrations or bundling the innovation product with current products can be effective.
The old saying "Monkey see, monkey do", describes our human tendency to imitate the behaviour of others without really thinking about the consequences. In the context of behaviour change and innovation adaptation, this tendency can be harnessed to our advantage. A "bottom-up" approach that leverages social norms and appeals to people's evolutionary tendencies can be more effective than a top-down framework that relies on legislation and sanctions, due to our innate desire to conform to social norms and be accepted by others. With this approach, we can also tap into other ancestral tendencies that shape our decision-making, such as self-interest, future discounting, and disregarding abstract concerns, as mentioned in research by PhD. Griskevicius and his colleagues.
By making environmental problems more tangible and demonstrating sustainable practices through role models or social groups, we can create a sense of collective responsibility and foster the desire to conform to pro-environmental behaviour. Finding your first clients may require a complementary set of tools and consistent messaging that appeals to their emotions, concerns, and ultimately their caveman's brain.
Drowning in Information yet?
A question that I sadly get asked too often when I mention that I studied psychology is “Are you able to read minds?”. The bad news is that understanding psychological mechanisms does not turn you into a superhero, and the truth is, understanding all the people involved in creating a successful innovation remains a complex puzzle to solve. However, there is good news - you don't have to go through this process alone.
Non-profit organisations like Ideas From Europe and the Sustainable Scale-Up Foundation (SSF), specifically focus on building communities around sustainable innovation to help innovators leverage their strengths and create a network to scale up their impactful ideas. By taking a bottom-up approach and working closely with companies, policymakers, scientists, and investors, we provide thought leadership to guide towards creating a safe and inspiring environment for successful implementation.
Our commitment to fostering innovation and creating a more sustainable future is reflected in its current projects. An excellent example is Andro Vos and his Wildlife Forensic Academy to help fight wildlife crime and train rangers in this field. With the help of one of Ideas From Europe, they were able to overcome significant funding challenges by providing a platform where Andro was able to share his passion and underline the urgency of his project. By showing consistency and willpower in pursuing his idea, Andro convinced investors, students, and locals of the value of his innovative academy.
If you're seeking that missing puzzle piece in your innovation process, the SSF may be just what you need. Check out the website and join our community of like-minded individuals. Together, we can turn knowledge into action and create a better world for generations to come.
