The increasing global competition within today's manufacturing industries is confronting organizations with interdisciplinary challenges that require intellectual expertise and innovative technological solutions in various knowledge areas. Research organizations and manufacturing companies can improve their overall performance by bundling expertise in collaborative innovation networks. For this purpose a systematic Benchmarking approach has been developed by Fraunhofer IPK to match the competencies and capacities within a pool of organizations in order to facilitate a sustainable cooperation in terms of resources, customers and R&D topics. Furthermore, a KPI-based identification of best performing network-partners allows an initiation of Best-Practice transfers to gain sustainable competitive advantages for the whole network. Based on a methodological approach, the identification of collaboration potentials and Best-Practices is supported by software tools that visualize the results in an understandable and applicable way.

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Institutions of higher education serve as models for excellence in education. They also have an added responsibility in providing guidance to the community for social upliftment and environmental sustainability. The present study conducted in the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee examines the perception of the students on the importance of sustainability to the campus. One hundred sixty-five students participated in the survey. The survey focuses on three broad categories, namely environmental, educational and research, and management factors. Environmental factors are more significant compared to management factors. Education and research is given less importance compared to environmental and management factors. The findings provide a useful extension to both the management and administrative strategies in decision-making process to improve the sustainability of the campus.

Urbanization in Indian metropolitan cities deteriorating the outdoor environment by polluting water, soil, and air to a great extent. Some of the cities are at a fatal level of contamination affecting indoor environments. Many studies had reported the impact of a high level of CO2 indoors on the occupants. Its effect depends upon the concentration of CO2, the duration of exposure, and the concentration of oxygen (O2). Still the effects range from increased respiratory rates to cardiac ailments and carcinoses. India is a developing country so the sustainable and affordable approaches will be more applicable in this context. This study tries to find a well-grounded way to improve indoor air quality. The current pilot study focuses on examining the effect of indoor plants on indoor air quality by measuring CO2 levels. This study has used three different species of plants for three different classrooms of higher education institutes. The study was performed in an unsealed environment where air velocity and CO2 were measured. Statistical analysis results show that indoor CO2 concentration has been reduced by 11% than outdoors after placing the plants. This study also shows the correlation between CO2 concentration and the distance from the plant using the Pearson correlation coefficient. Hence indoor vegetation can be considered a sustainable way of purifying the air and altering the microclimate of the classrooms for the well-being of the occupants.