Dave Peck
Contact Information
Email: peckds@hotmail.com
Current Project
Title: The knowledge transfer of sustainable product design approaches –
Sustainable product innovation best practice.
‘What has to change in organizations to allow all to embrace sustainability in design?’
My research began with an analysis of the UK government commissioned reports by Cox (Cox, 2005) and Stern (2007) and the premise that this work has informed some of the thinking over the past few years on the best approach the 21st century sustainable product innovation. This literature research forms the basis of my subsequent research.
However the work of Cox and Stern leaves gaps in defining sustainability and the work of Ehrenfeld (2008), among others, aims to address this: Ehrenfeld offers a radically new set of strategies to attain sustainability, he proposes a new definition: ‘sustainability is the possibility that humans and other life will flourish on Earth forever’.
In the field of ‘Design (innovate?) for sustainability there is abundant literature demonstrating ‘why’ organisations should go beyond compliance when it comes to sustainability (Elkington, 1997; Hawken, 1994) as well as ‘how’ to go some way to realise this commitment into products (e.g. Brezet & Hemel, 1997; Diehl & Crul, 2007; Tischner, 2000). The challenge lies with getting from ‘why’ to ‘how’: The ‘who’ explores the people who make it happen and ‘what’ are the products that will be produced?. The ‘who’ and ‘what’ have received far less attention than the why and how.
In summary I have focussed my PhD research into the ‘who’ domain of the model shown below.
I am interested in who are the key decision players in transformational design organisations. I am interested in finding a set of ‘tags’ to identify these people in this context. I would like to propose how these organisations could recruit, select, develop & support these people. I would also like to be able to propose how the development of ‘creative networks’ can be facilitated that would allow these people and their ideas to flourish.
The work is allied to the fields of organisational behaviour, change, culture and power
Presentation on project proposal
I am currently an Assistant Professor with Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands as well as an associate lecturer with the OU on the T307 Designing for a sustainable future course. My family and I live in Delft and of course we all enjoy cycling!
Further information can be found at www.tudelft.nl and I am in the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering and more specifically the Design Engineering team and the Design for Sustainability team. I am also involved with researching vehicle telematics and details of this EU funded project can be seen at www.eadis.eu
Details of the OU's excellent T307 course can be found on the OU website.
Page Last Updated: 20 February 2009