Sustainable Innovation in the Amazon

The Division of Functional Product Development recently co-organized a two-day course in Strategic Sustainable Development and two days of workshops on Sustainable Innovation – gathering a total of over 100 participants. The events were held in Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazon, Brazil.

As part of an ongoing collaboration between Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH) and Universidade Federal do Amazonas (UFAM) within the Real Change Programme, Tobias Larsson and Andreas Larsson from the Division of Functional Product Development collaborated with Göran Broman (also Adjunct Prof. at LTU/FPD) and Cesar Levy Franca from BTH to give a two-day course in Strategic Sustainable Development and facilitate two days of workshops concerning Sustainable Innovation in Manaus, the capital of the state of Amazon, Brazil.

The course and the workshops were held in conjunction with an international seminar focused on the environment and sustainability (Seminário Internacional de Ciências do Ambiente e Sustentabilidade da Amazônia), held at UFAM between June 15-18, 2010. The seminar was followed by a two-day course on Strategic Sustainability Development, where Andreas Larsson contributed with a lecture on Design Thinking, and Tobias Larsson talked about Product-Service Systems.

To facilitate the move from strategies and theories to tools and action, seminar participants were given the opportunity to also take part in three workshops over two days, covering various aspects of sustainable innovation in light of three overarching themes; the upcoming World Soccer Cup 2014 (where one group will play in Manaus); public-private technology partnerships for innovation in the Amazon region; a sustainable UFAM.

Over these four days, a total of over 100 participants got to experience a mix of frameworks, methods and practices developed at Stanford University (foresight), LTU (radical innovation and functional product development), and BTH (strategic sustainable development).