The project aimed to understand how
sustainability drivers – including regulatory,
standards, societal and customer demand –
were likely to change the needs of our client’s
customers and, therefore, the nature and
type of product that would be needed to win
in the market.

Our client asked:

Our client recognised that its customers were under pressure to adopt
significantly more sustainable practices – a fact that would likely change the
requirements of the product they sold.

Although unlikely to have a major impact on their product portfolio in the short
term, they wanted to understand what their future needs might be and to
identify areas which their R&D efforts should focus on.

The project story:

The project started with a workshop designed to help define a set of themes,
which then enabled us to explore how sustainability might impact our client’s
business in the next 5-10 years.

We used one-to-one consultations to build and test hypotheses and a final list
of 10 sustainability themes were explored with external stakeholder – including
customers, industry commentators, regulators, and NGOs.

A clear set of issues were identified during our conversations with market
stakeholders which were then linked to explicit areas of opportunity, threat, and
for which R&D initiatives had a substantive role in realising and defending.

Results: deliverables and outcomes

The output was shared with the client’s senior leadership team. It was then
used to explore and rationalise specific areas of R&D investment.