The product-market system approach to adopt life-cycle thinking in organisation management

¹ Centre for Environmental Strategy, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Surrey, UK
² Costain Ltd, Maidenhead, UK
³ Microsoft UK, UK
⁴ ARUP, UK

^* Corresponding author: r.mancinelli@surrey.ac.uk

Abstract

Pushed by public demand and regulations, the firms’ role in society is gradually changing from shareholder profit maximisation to societal shared value creation. Despite the positive market’s response in adopting sustainability as a business key driver, there is still a long way to go before companies can assess the full life-cycle impacts of their entire activities, products, and services regarding the triple bottom line. A gap remains in how businesses can set up sustainable products’ strategies within their wider business strategy and systematically replicate successes. Working together with an infrastructure company in the UK, we assessed how life-cycle thinking adoption could be pursued during management operations in the sustainability framework. It has emerged the necessity of a socio-technical system describing the life-cycle of products and services’ market proposition alongside the business model and business strategy concepts. We defined it as the product-market system as it aims to relate the life-cycle of product market proposition to the wider firms’ sustainability performances. It builds on LCT and multi Capitals approaches, and it should help firms address their role within the market and society they operate. Its use should help multi-product businesses to align their product strategies around established targets and values.