Quadruple helix - include the people
We’ve spent years and years of hearing about the complex story of the triple helix
model, the ongoing winding and intertwined stairway to Innovation heaven
paved by the three main players (business, science and governments). Lately, people are realizing that a basic axis was missing: the consumer, the market,
the people in the society. One wonders why it took us so long to include the most relevant player in the game, because
without understanding the needs of the buyers there is no market, thus no
value added product, no value creation.
B&W was one of the originators of the LIVING LAB EU-funded feasibility study on research infrastructure that can help us to understand better how to introduce sustainable innovations into the home environment on a massive scale. The key assumption was that many sustainable solutions exist, but for some reason these are not adopted massively. Something is holding consumers (or other elements in the buying process) back when it comes to adoption of these technologies, which are good for the world but not necessarily good for the individual living in this home, trying to have a good time in this life, not in the next.
Consumers need to be more involved in product and marketing development; not only in those industries that have been doing so for decades (the typical Fast Moving Consumer Goods or FMCG players like P&G, Unilever, Henkel) but also in the typical B2B sectors of construction, energy equipment or advanced materials. We need to get the solar heating people talking to massive amounts of users and non-users of their nifty technology, to make them work out why there are still people who will not fork out the added 15.000 euros in exchange for being good to the planet. We need to put the banks and the utilities (and the governments) in the same room while these consumers explain their hesitations, and we need to work together towards solutions that are practical, that do not break the bank (insofar as it was not already broke), and that really present a positive contribution to the comfort that the final consumer will enjoy in his home.
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