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Experimentation for Sustainable Innovation

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-97385-2_18

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 18
Experimentation for Sustainable
Innovation
Ilka Weissbrod

Introduction
Current production and consumption patterns will not support the crea-
tion of social, environmental and economic (‘triple bottom line’) value in
the longer term (Tennant 2013; Schaltegger et al. 2016). A linear view of
economics and the accompanying ‘business as usual’ paradigm will result
in incremental innovation (Dewberry and de Barros 2009); such incre-
mental innovation is unlikely to solve urgent climate and resource chal-
lenges (Dewberry and de Barros 2009; Westley et al. 2011). Business value
offerings have to radically change: ‘do differently’ is needed rather than ‘do
what we do but better’ (Bessant et al. 2014). Do differently innovation is

I. Weissbrod (*) 
Leuphana University Lüneburg, Centre for Sustainability Management,
Lüneburg, Germany
e-mail: ilka.weissbrod@leuphana.de
I. Weissbrod 
Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London, UK
© The Author(s) 2019 335
N. Bocken et al. (eds.), Innovation for Sustainability,
Palgrave Studies in Sustainable Business In Association with Future Earth,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97385-2_18
336    
I. Weissbrod

full of unknowns and requires experimentation in the corporate innova-

tion process (Chang et al. 2012). This chapter explores how experimen-
tation can provide evidence to support the development of triple bottom
line product and services in businesses or how experimentation can sup-
port sustainable innovation.1 Previous research has made the link between
the lean startup approach, triple bottom line value creation and experi-
mentation as corporate innovation capability (Weissbrod and Bocken
2017). This chapter adds to the research on experimentation for sustain-
ability through (1) contrasting experimentation in the natural sciences
with experimentation during sustainable innovation and (2) insight on
how a large corporation (Procter & Gamble) experiments during the sus-
tainable innovation process. The chapter narrows down triple bottom line
value creation to the life extension of resources. The reason for this is two-
fold: firstly, it enables readers to engage with the method easily because
the triple bottom line value creation goal of business innovation activities
is defined. Secondly, the focus on extending the life of resources enables
readers to make the link between the increasingly popular sustainability
concept Circular Economy and the sustainable innovation method of
experimentation. Extending the life of resources lies at the heart of the
Circular Economy concept (Blomsma and Brennan 2017).
The chapter starts with theory on experimentation (sec-
tions “Experimentation as a Learning Method” and “Fast Learning
Cycles based on the Lean Startup Approach”), goes on to contextualise
the theory with some practitioner insight (sections “The Case of Procter
& Gamble” and “Familiar Innovation Mechanisms open the door for
Sustainable Innovation”) and finishes with offering a method (section
“Customer Development Cycles to Test Sustainable Innovation Ideas”)
and conclusions.

Experimentation as a Learning Method

Experimentation, in essence, is ‘a trial and error process in which each
trial generates new insights on a problem’ (Lee et al. 2004: 310) and
this process ‘relies primarily on an intervention and that allows for the
production of empirical evidence’ (Caniglia et al. 2017). Empirical
 18  Experimentation for Sustainable Innovation    
337

evidence is key to the scientific process (Caniglia et al. 2017; Hicks

1982). Academic researchers have set experimentation as driver of
societal transitions in the context of sustainability challenges (Caniglia
et al. 2017; Luederitz et al. 2017; Weber et al. 1999), as approach
to generate new business models (Andries et al. 2013; Antikainen
et al. 2017; Bocken et al. 2018; Chesbrough 2010; Tuulenmäki and
Välikangas 2011) and studied it as an organisational capability for sus-
tainable innovation processes (Weissbrod and Bocken 2017). All of
these research strands have in common that organisations and society
acknowledge that action-led learning is useful to support the develop-
ment of theory that is relevant to practitioners in business and society.
Experimentation in the natural sciences aims to produce evidence that is
universally applicable, value-free and disconnected from context (Mitchell
2009). Experiments are strictly controlled: replicability of experiments and
applying deductive learning only are two principles unique to the natural
sciences. Some principles of experimental learning, however, are univer-
sally relevant. An example is articulating the problem to be addressed or,
in other words, the hypothesis to be tested. The planning of experiments
helps to define and narrow down this problem to be investigated in a pro-
cess or system: ‘A careful statement of the problem goes a long way toward
its solution’ (Hicks 1982: 3). The person conducting the experiment, the
‘experimenter’, starts by asking questions about the problem/hypothesis in
order to plan experimental designs. This will, ideally, lead to useful answers
through the smallest number of tests (Atkinson and Donev 1992) through
focusing on the most critical of hypotheses (Osterwalder et al. 2014).
Another example of a universally relevant experimental learning principle
is that restricting the number of experiments is desired to enable maximum
learning through efficient use of resources: time and money. This princi-
ple has also been identified as characteristic of sustainable business model
experimentation in recent research (Bocken et al. 2018). The final articu-
lation of the problem/hypothesis addressed through the experiment should
include a reference to one or multiple experimentation assessment criterion
(Hicks 1982). This will ensure that relevant evidence is generated.
In an ideal natural sciences experimental setting, the experimenter will
manipulate inputs into an experiment and the differences between exper-
iment input and output will help to gain the desired learning (Fig. 18.1).
338    
I. Weissbrod

Fig. 18.1  General model of a process under investigation (Adapted from

Montgomery 2001)

Variables in natural sciences experiments are the key to gaining cause-

and-effect insights: there are three types. (1) Independent variables
are what the experimenter manipulates during an experiment. These
manipulations impact the (2) dependent variables and lead to the differ-
ence between input and output. The (3) controlled variables are process
or system factors that the experimenter needs to keep stable. Only with
stable controlled variables can the effects of manipulating the independ-
ent variable(s) on the dependent variable(s) be observed.
During sustainable innovation processes, however, applying the natu-
ral sciences experimental learning process is nearly impossible. For once,
sustainability has been described as a ‘moving target’ (Gaziulusoy et al.
2013: 105), therefore, replicability of experiments is difficult. Even with a
defined goal of extending the life of resources used in products and ser-
vices through innovation activities, the process or system to be investigated
through experimentation will change. Uncontrollable are the experiment
input (e.g. new data about resource use needs to be considered, the inno-
vation team resources change) and the experiment variables (e.g. custom-
ers bring with them different expectations and life experiences and might,
therefore, be viewed as an uncontrollable variable). Furthermore, the linear
natural sciences experimentation process omits the ‘messy’ nature of social
interactions and dynamics that are present (Mitchell 2009), and even nec-
essary, in business learning processes that underpin the development of new
products (Lenox and Ehrenfeld 1998). Finally, innovation for sustainabil-
ity has a higher number of elements compared to conventional innovation
(Jay and Gerard 2015); therefore, the sustainable innovation process has
 18  Experimentation for Sustainable Innovation    
339

a higher level of complexity2 (Maguire et al. 2006). This means that the
unknowns to be explored through experiments in sustainable innovation
are higher in number than during conventional innovation. All this poses a
dilemma for innovation managers in business looking to increase the triple
bottom line value ‘output’ of their innovation process.

Fast Learning Cycles based on the Lean Startup

Approach
In contrast to the linear scientific experimental learning process
(Fig. 18.1), circular learning loops are a means for innovation managers to
generate evidence in the business context. This chapter section explains the
origins of this learning approach and sets it in the context of sustainable
innovation.
At the heart of innovation lays the novel combination of produc-
tion means (Schumpeter 1934). Entrepreneurs drive these novel com-
binations and sometimes even destroy stagnant markets through these
activities. Since Schumpeter, how to engage customers in the creation
of new services has become a distinct field of management research
(Edvardsson et al. 2006; Füller and Matzler 2007). New products and
services should be based on gaps in the markets or they should solve
customer problems. Filling these gaps and addressing these problems
with new customer value offerings should be pursued whilst engaging
customers (Blank 2013; Edvardsson et al. 2006; Ries 2011). ‘Customer
development’ (Blank 2013), also known as ‘validated customer prop-
osition learning’ (Ries 2011), is a proven method to generate insights
about customers (Müller and Thoring 2012) and has gained substan-
tial traction in the startup world and now also in larger corporations
(Blank 2013). This learning approach, coupled with principles from the
agile engineering software development process, lies at the heart of the
‘lean startup’ approach, the term coined by Eric Ries (2011). In essence,
validated customer proposition learning is looking to increase customer
benefits through fast product and service iterations (Blank 2013; Ries
2011). Ideas are built up into minimum viable products (MVPs), cus-
tomer reaction to these products/services is measured and the resulting
340    
I. Weissbrod

data contain the key learning needed to refine the product/service idea
(Fig. 18.2). The MVPs used in this process need to be refined enough to
enable the completion of the full learning cycle, at the same time these
product versions are created with ‘a minimum amount of effort and the
least amount of development time’ (Ries 2011: 77).
This learning cycle about how customers react to MVPs is repeated
fast and, usually, more than once (Blank 2013; Ries 2011). Only when
customers respond well to the minimum viable product, marketing of
the new products/services and building of a business model should take
place (Blank 2013; Bocken et al. 2018). Intensive customer engage-
ment during, ideally quick, product and service iterations will enable
innovators to achieve product/service fit with gaps in the market. Both
established businesses and small startups may pursue sustainable inno-
vation (Hockerts and Wüstenhagen 2010). It has been observed that

Fig. 18.2  Validated customer learning loop (Amended from Weissbrod and

Bocken 2017, adapted from Ries 2011 and Blank 2013)
 18  Experimentation for Sustainable Innovation    
341

resource-rich large firms are more likely than cash-strapped startups to

overcommit resources to launch a new value offering to the market.
Even for successful large firms, without sufficiently testing whether cus-
tomers have an appetite for the new offering, this overcommitting of
resources can be ‘catastrophic’ (Blank 2013: 11) for survival.
The work by Osterwalder et al. (2014) brought together the c­ ustomer
development work by Blank (2013), Ries (2011) and the business
model canvas developed by Osterwalder and Pigneur (2009). The ‘pure’
customer development approach (i.e. Blank 2013; Ries 2011), how-
ever, is starting with producing new value propositions from scratch.
In contrast, Osterwalder et al. (2014) anchor their customer develop-
ment tool (‘Value Proposition Canvas’) in the business model canvas,
i.e. the business structure: ‘the Value Proposition Canvas zooms into the
details of two building blocks of the business model canvas’ (p. XIV).
This book chapter argues that this structural starting point means a
more likely re-enforcement of the business status quo (i.e. incremen-
tal innovation), because organisational structures known to the person
populating the canvas with its nine building blocks (Osterwalder et al.
2014; Osterwalder and Pigneur 2009) are considered during the cus-
tomer development process. This is especially disadvantageous if the
person populating the canvas has a business school background: it has
been observed that they ‘want only to execute a pre-designed business
model, based on standard principles about sales, marketing and cus-
tomer reaction, which they regard as facts’ (Blank 2011). Sustainable
innovation requires new ways of thinking and will result in the creation
of new, more sustainable, business models (Boons and Lüdeke-Freund
2013). Using the customer development approach proposed by Blank
(2013) and Ries (2011) might help to facilitate the necessary new
ways of thinking, because this approach does not start with the busi-
ness structure as starting point for sustainable innovation. Instead, test-
ing triple bottom line value creation ideas with customers is the starting
point. It has been argued in classic eco-innovation literature that busi-
nesses should aim to create new markets—and not focus on current cus-
tomer demand (Fussler and James 1996). The creation of new markets
requires, however, a change in current customer demand. Therefore, the
testing of triple bottom line value creation ideas with customers for their
342    
I. Weissbrod

market potential, before broadening sustainable innovation efforts to the

wider business model, has been recommended (Bocken et al. 2018).

The Case of Procter & Gamble

A semi-structured interview with the P&G Vice President of Global
Sustainability, Virginie Helias, explored how the business experiments
to innovate for sustainability. Multinational business P&G special-
ised in selling fast moving consumer goods in the home and personal
care sector. Within this sector, the largest share of sustainability prod-
uct impacts takes place in the home of the customer. For example,
shower gel and laundry detergents are most resource intensive after the
customer bought them: water is the most impacted resource. Carbon
emissions are also highest in this stage of the product value chain, due
to the energy needed to heat water. P&G achieved significant resource
efficiency achievements over the last 10 years within its direct opera-
tions: in 2017, 65% of manufacturing sites sent zero waste to landfill,
with a goal of 100% by the year 2020. In order to achieve equal success
once P&G products reach the customer, the business recognises that
efficiency gains alone will not suffice. P&G has a history for success-
ful innovation approaches and sustainability management. Academic
research has, therefore, used P&G as example of how a corporation
uses the open innovation approach (e.g. Dodgson et al. 2006), with
the sustainability management approach also explored in research (e.g.
Epstein et al. 2010). The interview was conducted at the P&G prem-
ises, recorded and verbatim transcribed, with publicly available informa-
tion supplementing the original interview data.

Familiar Innovation Mechanisms open the door

for Sustainable Innovation
This section presents key challenges a business might encounter during the
sustainable innovation process and how these challenges are acknowledged
and potentially addressed. The case of P&G is drawn upon throughout.
 18  Experimentation for Sustainable Innovation    
343

If a business is looking to increase sustainable innovation efforts after

mainly pursuing conventional innovation, generating social and envi-
ronmental value through innovation activities will be unfamiliar to the
business. The lean startup learning cycle can be a useful means to gener-
ate targeted learning through customer experiments, whilst dealing with
the unfamiliarity of creating social and environmental value (Weissbrod
and Bocken 2017). Unfamiliarity with environmental and social value
creation can be expected in teams that are usually in pursuit of conven-
tional innovation. For example, water usage during personal care is a key
sustainability impact that is relevant to P&G. The teams developing new
shampoo formulation might not, however, consider this sustainability
impact from the outset of the innovation process and sustainable innova-
tion might even happen by accident.

Very often people working on innovation develop sustainable innovation

without knowing it.

Embedding sustainability knowledge across all teams pursuing inno-

vation will, therefore, be beneficial for the recognition of sustainable
innovation opportunities. This will enable wider rollout of sustainable
innovation in the business divisions that develop new products and ser-
vices. P&G’s Vice President Global Sustainability sees her role explicitly
in the embedding sustainability in the ongoing business practice:

We have a group of people on sustainability who are corporate and I’m not
corporate. I’m really embedded in the business because my vision is to embed
sustainability into the business practices and culture. (..) I work with the busi-
ness to help them accelerate their innovation, their commercialisation and
their capabilities to drive sustainability into the heart of the business.

Focusing on exploring gaps in the markets allows teams in pursuit of sus-

tainable innovation to test a variety of triple bottom line value creation
opportunities. At the same time, mirroring the existing dominant cor-
porate approach to conventional innovation can be helpful to push for
sustainable innovation within a business—this can enable faster progress
to achieve new, stretching, triple bottom line value creation goals. In the
344    
I. Weissbrod

case of P&G, open innovation is embedded throughout the company

and sustainable innovation does capitalise on the success this approach
brought to the business. It is one way in which ideas for sustainable inno-
vation come into the business.

The [P&G open innovation] Connect and Develop concept applies to all
innovation including sustainability. I think what we see on sustainabil-
ity is that we are getting lots of ideas from our suppliers coming to us
with sustainability ideas because they are just working on this. The key
challenge really is (..) to bring them to the right people in the business
because it’s just unfamiliar territory. That would be the difference with
other innovation ideas, is that people are not really familiar with what
[sustainable innovation] is and what it can do and have lots of precon-
ceived ideas of, “It will always be more expensive”. One of my roles is to
make sure that I see these ideas and I bring them to the right place in the
business and we can nurture them and then develop them internally.

The key challenge of developing ideas internally is a dilemma not only for
P&G. Research on pursuing innovation outside the business status quo
has been trying to untangle the key barriers and components for many
years. One of the key barriers identified is a restrictive mindset and a lack
of relevant competences to pursue activities outside the innovation status
quo (Sandberg and Aarikka-Stenroos 2014). P&G identified the lack of
sustainability competences as an area for ongoing improvement during
the pursuit of sustainable innovation. Allowing experiments that are out-
side the known corporate innovation mechanisms to flourish internally
is highly dependent on the leader of a division. P&G is no exception: a
product division leader with a deep understanding of sustainability and
an appetite for experimenting to develop different and more sustainable
products has been essential to allow experimentation with triple bottom
line value propositions. In the division, the innovation team took part in
a highly unusual off-site excursion. The goal of the excursion was to expe-
rience how P&G products impact social and environmental sustainability.
The team went to Kenya.

So that’s the most extreme of inspiration. It’s taking a full week away in
Kenya. I wanted to show them how their technology could actually have a
 18  Experimentation for Sustainable Innovation    
345

lot greater impact that what we can imagine, social and environmental. It was
an absolutely fabulous experience. We brought back four big business ideas.
Three of them are now [Author note: 2014] being implemented, so very suc-
cessful. (..) One is in pilot, one is integrated into our innovation pipeline and
the other two actually are just integrated in the innovation pipeline, so they
are being worked as part of the full traditional innovation system.

The innovation goal for the excursion team taken to Kenya was fairly
broad in its scope to explore social and environmental value creation.
For the purposes of this particular excursion, a broad goal was useful. For
more targeted experiments, during the innovation process this is, how-
ever, different. It has long been established that clear measurable goals of
project activities ‘help to absorb uncertainty and create focus’ (McGrath
2001: 120). Uncertainty is related to a high level of complexity and as
argued earlier, sustainable innovation is more complex than conventional
innovation due to the higher number of factors involved (Jay and Gerard
2015). After all, how can we design an experiment and gain useful learn-
ing if we do not know what we are trying to achieve with the experiment
(see Hicks 1982)? Making better use of resources used in products and
services (i.e. extending the life of resources) is a clearly defined goal for
innovation activities. P&G does not only use long excursions for inno-
vation teams to gain a deeper understanding of sustainability challenges.
Visiting a landfill to highlight the undesirability of a linear consumption
pattern has been an excursion destination that took place over much
shorter period of time. The goal of reducing post-consumer waste going
to landfill was the driver for the landfill site-visit of the P&G innovation
team and aligned with the operational goal of reducing waste going to
landfill to zero by 2020 for all P&G manufacturing facilities.

Customer Development Cycles to Test

Sustainable Innovation Ideas
Open innovation or site visits are two possible ways in which businesses
can generate new product and service ideas. Turning these sustaina-
ble innovation ideas into commercial offerings is where the customer
346    
I. Weissbrod

development cycle (Blank 2013; Ries 2011) comes into play. The key
difference between using the customer cycle in conventional innovation
activities and sustainable innovation activities is twofold. Firstly, the
learning goal to be served with using the customer development cycle
must aim to serve social, environmental and economic value creation in
equal measure. Secondly, triple bottom line value creation knowledge
must be embedded in the team that experiments to ensure deliberate
rather than accidental learning. Customer development cycles test dif-
ferent versions of MVPs, with a number of cycles running in parallel.
Each customer development cycle consists of the 6 steps outlined ear-
lier (Fig. 18.2). To recall: (1) ideas are (2) built up into (3) MVPs, con-
sumer responses to these are (4) tested and measured, and this (5) data
is used to (6) refine the ideas. For the purpose of sustainable innovation,
each customer development cycle should be underpinned by triple bot-
tom line value creation. At the same time, the business has social, envi-
ronmental and economic value creation priorities at the corporate level
that innovations must meet. In the case of P&G, the goal of ‘zero waste
to landfill from manufacturing sites’ is a key value creation priority.
Corporate triple bottom line value creation priorities form the bound-
aries of the experimentation space for the customer development cycles.
A combination of (1) the articulated sustainable innovation goal and
(2) the triple bottom line boundaries created by the corporate priorities
enable innovation teams to focus, whilst they explore new products and
services through customer testing. Figure 18.3 shows how product and
service ideas that look to extend the lifetime of resources can be tested
through customer development cycles. Social (purple), environmen-
tal (green) and economic (blue) value creation underpin each customer
development cycle. At the same time, the boundary for the total exper-
imentation space (orange line), broadens out in scope before narrowing
again. This is to be expected due to the moving sustainability goalposts
(Gaziulusoy et al. 2013) and the large number of interconnected fac-
tors in sustainable innovation (Jay and Gerard 2015) that increase
uncertainty. Previous case study research has observed the broadening
of the triple bottom line boundary scope: it allowed for the customer
exploration of value propositions outside the current business practice
(Weissbrod and Bocken 2017).
 18  Experimentation for Sustainable Innovation    
347

Fig. 18.3  Experimental learning method for sustainable innovation based on

the lean startup approach (Adapted from Weissbrod and Bocken 2017)

Extending the lifetime of resources, key to the concept of the

Circular Economy, is the problem that the experimentation process
shown in Fig. 18.3 addresses. There is no single triple bottom line
experimentation boundary that is universally applicable across all indus-
tries and companies. Each sustainable innovation experimentation pro-
cess aimed at refining sustainability ideas is a real balancing act. Here is
P&G’s take on this sustainable innovation balancing act:

There is a lot of education linked to this, because (..) What is more

sustainable? So you need to touch on things like LCA [Life Cycle
Assessment] - if you improve on one dimension [of sustainability], you
need to make sure you don’t worsen on the other dimensions. So it’s a
very complex topic.

Indeed, research has found that experimental learning approaches are

hard to implement in businesses, included in businesses dedicated to
innovation and even business model experimentation (Tuulenmäki
and Välikangas 2011). It is, however, a necessary step to pursue the
development of triple bottom line products and services. Without cus-
tomer development experiments to test MVPs, there is a risk of devel-
oping full-scale pilots that will have no traction in the marketplace
(Blank 2011).
348    
I. Weissbrod

Conclusions
This chapter showed the differences in the theoretical underpinning
between experimentation for sustainable innovation and the natural
sciences experimentation process. In contrast to the linear experimen-
tation process used in natural sciences, experimentation for sustainable
innovation is a cyclical process during which experimentation varia-
bles cannot be tightly controlled. The case of P&G highlighted some
of circumstances a business might encounter when looking to experi-
ment during the sustainable innovation process. Sustainable innova-
tion is more complex than conventional innovation due to the higher
number of factors involved. The experimenting business can, therefore,
expect for the problem space to change and even broaden out during
the experimentation process. In addition, balancing the three aspects
of triple bottom line value creation is hard for businesses to achieve.
Practitioners looking to develop sustainable business models should
initially run experiments to test a new triple bottom line value cre-
ation with potential customers. This will ensure that broader business
model experiments, likely to include a larger number of stakehold-
ers, are building on a strong triple bottom line value creation founda-
tion. Future research needs to test and develop the method shown in
Fig. 18.3 through case studies. Ideally, the case study businesses aim to
explicitly experiment during the sustainable innovation process, in order
to achieve challenging triple bottom line value creation goals.

Notes
1. Sustainable innovation is used throughout this chapter as term to
encompass corporate innovation activities that aim to produce triple
bottom line product and service offers.
2. This assertion is based on ‘Features of complex systems’ as presented by
Maguire et al. (2006: 166); the authors do not refer specifically to fea-
tures of innovation processes.
 18  Experimentation for Sustainable Innovation    
349

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