Exploring Eco-Design Strategies in Italian Design-Driven Firms

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) connected to new product development, zooming in on active design-oriented firms in the industrial sector in Italy. 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 is 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 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. The study represents an additional revelatory contribution to the understanding of the relationship between innovation and environmental sustainability and the generic kinds of According to entrepreneurs, eco-design strategies are adopted by highly design-oriented firms in new product development.