SummaryOrganizations cognitive of the strategic risk and opportunities associated with environmental challenges may employ industrial ecology (IE) concepts, methods, and tools to develop capabilities that both enhance environmental performance and provide competitive benefits. We introduce a typology of strategic benefits related to competitive advantage that are enabled by improved environmental performance. Industry examples illustrate how organizations embed IE concepts and methods into systems to generate capabilities that deliver these benefits and configure them for competitive advantage. The examples demonstrate the idiosyncratic, path-dependent nature of capability development that helps sustain advantage, especially when competitors lack cognition of the global scope of the challenge, and the risks and benefits involved.

No abstract

Summary As organizations practice environmental design, some discover green design positively impacts business performance. This article demonstrates how an organization can employ existing design methods and tools with the Kano technique to craft an environmental product design strategy that enhances its business strategy. These tools expand the toolbox of the industrial ecologist and enable the link between green design and business improvement. The Kano technique was developed in the 1980s to facilitate design of innovative products. We also introduce terminology and concepts such as “voices of the environment,”“environmental knowledge management,”“environmental profile,” and “environmental product attribute” in order to bridge the gap between industrial ecology and business concerns. To demonstrate how an organization can find the synergy between business value and environmental value, this article describes three activities and their corresponding tools and exhibits their use with industry examples. First, we present techniques by which designers can identify and prioritize customers and stakeholders who voice both environmental and business concerns. Second, we describe how voice‐of‐the‐customer translation techniques can be used to efficiently collect and translate data from these customers and stakeholders into critical environmental product and service attributes. Third, we discuss how the Kano technique can be used to connect green design to business strategy by making visible the variety of stakeholder and customer perceptions of these critical environmental attributes. Examples then demonstrate how those perceptions suggest appropriate approaches for integrating the critical environmental attributes into product and business strategy. Finally, we provide examples based on work done with General Electric Medical Systems (GEMS) to illustrate the design of products that improve environmental performance while adding greater perceived value for numerous customers along material‐flow value chains.

Many changes occur in the final hours of life and family members of those dying at home need to be prepared for these changes, both to understand what is happening and to provide care. The objectives of this study were to describe 1) the written materials used by hospices to prepare families for dying in the home setting, and 2) the content of such materials. Questionnaires were sent to 400 randomly selected hospices, of which 170 responded (45.3%) sending their written materials. The most frequently used publications were Gone from My Sight (n= 118 or 69.4%), Final Gifts (n=44 or 25.9%) and Caregiving (n=14 or 8.2%). Half (56.5%) of the hospices used other publications and a majority (n=87 or 51.2%) used multiple publications. Materials were given to the families by nurses (78.2%) or social workers (67.6%). More than 90% of the hospices had materials that addressed the following: decreased fluid intake, decreased food intake, breathing pattern changes, cold extremities, mottling, increased sleeping, changes at the moment of death, audible secretions, urinary output changes, disorientation, incontinence, overall decline and restlessness. Seven signs were addressed less than 30% of the time; pain (28.2%), dyspnea (19.4%), bed bound state (18.2%), skin changes (18.2%), vital sign changes (17.1%), surge of energy (11.8%) and mandibular breathing (5.9%). Hospice staff should know the content of the materials offered by their agency so they can verbally address the gaps between the written materials and the family needs.

No abstract