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AALTO SUSTAINABILITY HUB SEMINAR SERIES: Emerging Challenges and Unintended Consequences of Sustainable Development Innovation

Professor Jeremy Hall D.Phil. Centre for Social Innovation Management, Surrey Business School

From the ‘Eroom’ Effect (Moore's Law Backwards) to Borlaug's Paradox: Emerging Challenges and Unintended Consequences of Sustainable Development Innovation
Innovation has been recognized as key for improving social and environmental conditions, yet limited progress has been made towards more sustainable societies. This presentation will explore two challenges of sustainable development innovation. 
Aalto Sustainability Hub, © Creative Sustainability Heidi Konttinen

The first challenge is the 'Eroom' Effect (Moore’s Law backwards) proposed by Scannell et al. (2012), where the promise of improved price-performance from technological advancements are often outweighed by regulatory approval and downstream commercialization costs.  The second concerns unanticipated outcomes, what we call “Borlaug's Paradox” after Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug, “the man who saved a billion lives” by pioneering Green Revolution technologies, vastly improving agricultural output but also leading to major environmental impacts and a population explosion.  Such paradoxes may hinder the development of more sustainable technologies, especially those coming from publically funded institutes, or from emerging countries.  To illustrate these challenges, we present various examples of technology development from publically funded institutes in Brazil and Canada.  We conclude with implications for industry, policy and advocacy groups. 

The presenter Jeremy Hall is the Director and Chaired Professor of the Centre for Social Innovation Management at Surrey Business School, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Engineering and Technology Management (2017 impact factor: 2.686).  Previously he was the Director of the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility, University of Nottingham, a Professor at the Beedie School of Business, Simon Fraser University (Vancouver), an Associate Professor at the Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary, and a Lecturer at the University of Sussex (UK). 

Jeremy Hall’s research interests include the social impacts of innovation & entrepreneurship, sustainable supply chains, strategies for sustainable development innovation, research misconduct and the unanticipated outcomes of innovation.  He has been awarded over $1.3 million in research support from various funding agencies, and has collaborated with a range of natural and social scientists from numerous countries.

Jeremy Hall’s work has been published in for example Business Strategy and the Environment, California Management Review, Ecological Economics, Energy Policy, Entrepreneurship: Theory & Practice, Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of Production Research, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Operations Management, MIT Sloan Management Review, Research Policy, Research-Technology Management, Small Business Economics, Technological Forecasting & Social Change and Technovation. 

Co-organized with SUB research group

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