Sustainability Product Portfolio: A Review

Abstract

Many companies have identified the importance of sustainable innovation for long-term competitiveness and recognition but face difficulties in translating sustainability strategies into practical action. Some companies have shown an interest to include sustainability dimensions into their product portfolio, which can be an efficient way to communicate the sustainability performance of the products internally and externally and even speed up the development of more sustainable solutions. Our research aims to determine how a sustainability portfolio can be defined and how to assess portfolios from a sustainability perspective. A systematic literature review on sustainability product portfolio was conducted. The results indicated that a general portfolio setting follows a selection criteria and the company´s strategies, which usually are based on management elements, e.g., time, cost, risk, quality, etc., leaving behind sustainability variables. Most of the tools used for evaluation criteria miss the holistic view. The companies could benefit from a systematic approach to implementing sustainability into their product portfolio. The findings were connected with a previous study to evaluate a sustainability assessment approach used for a technology portfolio. For future work, a descriptive study will complement an understanding on how to guide companies to shape their sustainability product portfolios.

Sustainabilty integration in product portfolio for sustainable development: Findings from the industry

“…From the literature review (Villamil & Hallstedt, 2018), it was found that there is a lack of a common understanding of how to define a sustainability product portfolio. The companies in this study and authors from previous research agree on that the company strategy has an important role in the portfolio development and definition (Cluzel et al, 2016).…”

“…In a previous state‐of‐the‐art study, made by the authors (Villamil & Hallstedt, 2018), the field of integration and implementation of sustainability in product portfolio was analyzed. That study showed that there is a lack of a common understanding of what sustainability integration in product portfolio means and that there is a vague definition of the sustainability product portfolio concept in the literature.…”

“…This research is based on the main steps of the Design Research Methodology (DRM) (Blessing & Chakrabarti, 2009), presenting the link between the methodology steps: (a) research clarification, (b) descriptive study I, and (c) prescriptive study. In a previous research made by the authors, a systematic literature review was performed (Villamil & Hallstedt, 2018), to understand the state of the art of the sustainability product portfolio concept and to identify methods, tools, challenges, and opportunities in connection to a product portfolio, as well as to identify gaps in the portfolio development process,…”

A Research Roadmap for Sustainable Design Methods and Tools

“…To address this issue, actionable and easy-to-adopt processes are needed to facilitate uptake by industry. In recent years, researchers have started to investigate organizational barriers and incentives for sustainability implementation from the perspectives of risk assessment [57,58], portfolio management [59,60], product requirements [61], sustainable policy, regulation [62], and overall company vision and mindset [63]. Further investigations are still needed to deepen our understanding of sustainability implementation in organizations or companies [64].…”

Sustainable Product Portfolio Evaluation Methodology for Sustainability Reporting in the Cement and Concrete Industry

“…Instead, some industrial players developed their own set of tools to perform sustainable product evaluations. These tools incorporate elements of previous research, such as a life-cycle perspective and, in many cases, are used for the management of a sustainable product portfolio (Villamil and Hallstedt, 2018). Henkel, a prominent company in the consumer goods industry follows a stage-gate based innovation process that includes benchmarking the sustainability profile of a new product against state-of-the art.…”