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Although the methods and approaches of sustainable design have been developing for more than 20 years, their application in design education and the design process is still under-examined. This study aims to investigate how to integrate sustainability into project-based undergraduate courses in industrial design education, where sustainability has recently been introduced into the curriculum.

Two workshops were carried out as pilot studies within two different elective courses. The scope of the study included sustainable design approaches at both the product and product-service system innovation levels.

The findings show that choosing between the two levels and the sustainable design approach is the most important challenge that students face during the design process. Moreover, the project brief influences the choice of the approach.

Following the findings, a sustainable design process model for the project-based undergraduate design courses was proposed. Finally, a new course curriculum on sustainable design was developed based on the findings from the study.

Product-service systems (PSS) are regarded as highly sustainable solutions. However, studies identifying and comparing the sustainable potential of product-service offerings by considering the three sustainability dimensions are still scarce. This paper aims to benchmark and analyse the sustainable potential of a use-oriented PSS, showing the influence of the context of implementation on the sustainable potential of the solutions.

By adopting a competitive benchmarking approach, six bicycle-sharing systems from different countries were selected for analysis. The main sustainability-related aspects in use-oriented PSS (the systems investigated) were identified through a literature review. Multiple secondary sources were used to collect data about the analysed PSS. A qualitative analysis was conducted through triangulation of the sources to identify and compare the systems by considering the selected sustainability aspects.

The main results show that use-oriented PSS provide a range of economic, social, and environmental benefits, confirming the sustainable potential of such solutions. Several similarities between the systems have been identified, along with some differences, especially regarding their integration with other transport systems and the use of renewable energy, which can affect users' acceptance, operation efficacy, and overall sustainable potential of the solutions.

This study identifies best practices that can be considered by other bike-sharing businesses to improve their sustainability potential.

This study identifies and explores the sustainable potential of bicycle-sharing solutions using a benchmark approach. It augments existing empirical knowledge on sustainable PSS and business models by revealing best practices, including the context that may enhance the sustainability potential of the solutions regarding environmental, economic, and social benefits.

This paper aims to investigate how sustainable solutions in the textiles and clothing industry are decided through business-to-business collaboration.

A qualitative and inductive study of the Brazilian textiles and clothing industry is carried out, an industry in which sustainable denim products are increasingly being recognized as subject to competition. The paper adopts a focal net perspective to understand the collaborative arrangements through which firms combine the products they offer as a sustainable solution. Documentary data were collected and in-depth interviews conducted with the top managers of one of the world’s largest denim-manufacturing companies present in the Brazilian market, which is involved in providing sustainable solutions in cooperation with its partners.

The authors describe the factors that reflect the conditions for generating a sustainable business performance, including a corporate policy that assumes and articulates the responsibility for social interest, core-business stakeholders and regulatory requirements; a sustainable product-service system (S.PSS) based on innovative interactions between the stakeholders in the value production system; relations between stakeholders that promote business sustainability through a dependable value chain characterized by a sense of collaboration and collective actions; and a business model for sustainability that combines economic with social and ecological value creation. These factors help a business establish a more strategic position in the value network, enabling it to capture more value.

Sustainable solutions are developed dynamically and collaboratively within an S.PPS. Managers need to focus not only on tangible products but also on intangible services designed and combined so that they are jointly capable of fulfilling customer’s needs and creating social and ecological value. Managers within the solution provider must develop business models for sustainability that are continually evolving to satisfy the interest in resource-efficiency by actors in civil society, business and government.

The research contributes to the existing literature by applying approaches involving corporate social responsibility (CSR) and strategic nets to the study of the implementation of an S.PSS. Sustainable initiatives and offers developed by an S.PSS are not isolated phenomena but result from collaboration in finding solutions among different actors linked in a strategic net. In this sense, companies need to adjust their business models for sustainability to generate positive economic, social and ecological value and gain credibility for their missions.

The paper attempts to address the following research questions (RQs): RQ1: What are the main research topics within PSS research? RQ2: What are future trends for PSS research?

Twenty years of research (1999–2018) on product-service systems (PSS) produced a significant amount of scientific literature on the topic. As the PSS field is relatively new and fragmented across different disciplines, a review of the prior and relevant literature is important in order to provide the necessary framework for understanding current developments and future perspectives. This paper aims to review and organize research contributions regarding PSS. A machine-learning algorithm, namely Latent Dirichlet Allocation, has been applied to the whole literature corpus on PSS in order to understand its structure.

The adopted approach resulted in the definition of eight distinct and representative topics able to deal adequately with the multidisciplinarity of the PSS. Furthermore, a systematic review of the literature is proposed to summarize the state-of-the-art and limitations in the identified PSS research topics. Based on this critical analysis, major gaps and future research challenges are presented and discussed.

On the basis of the results of the topic landscape, the paper presents some potential research opportunities on PSSs. In particular, challenges, transversal to the eight research topics and related to recent technology trends and digital transformation, have been discussed.

There is an inherent conflict of interest between the product developer and the need for improved environmental health, as material consumption in the apparel industry is synonymous with revenue. This paper aims to explore the potential of product service systems (PSS), an emerging business concept in the sustainable design milieu, as a conduit for dematerialization in the apparel industry. The potential to sell fewer material apparel products and more services designed to enhance or support those products is a viable alternative. The authors correlate design attributes that most often lead to the disposal of apparel with PSS concepts, which may dematerialize the supply chain while increasing consumer satisfaction. This discussion also has important implications for design education related to PSS. Thus, a conceptual model is presented to guide such. Apparel products remain important in today's consumer culture. However, PSS may offer a way to maintain this contribution without the harmful byproducts.

Conventional shopping-scapes are designed to promote a linear form of consumption. Products are moved from production systems through consumer distribution nodal points. The consumption of commodities through these points is promoted as the main, if not only, legitimate activity of shopping centres. A circular economic (CE) paradigm offers an alternative to the current model of linear consumption so that there are restorative processes to ensure products, components and materials are valued at all stages of product life (Ellen Macarthur Foundation, 2013). However, this model, like its contemporary linear model, overlooks the opportunities for more socially rewarding consumption that could particularly be addressed through the shopping scape. The ByeBuy! Shop was conceived to test ideas on an alternative shopping scape to increase social engagement and reduced consumption without the use of money for exchange. Accordingly, it is used here to exemplify a CE paradigm.

This study examines the criteria for evaluating the quality of servitization and the factors influencing the project–service system's success.

Evidence was collected through three rounds of Delphi consensus with 42 project managers.

The results indicate that the quality of servitization in project-oriented organizations is conceptualized as a cumulative construct driven by the product-service system's overall ability to offer more customer value. This value is defined by three interconnected dimensions: the service, the project and the integration system. The study also proposes a novel customer-oriented quality process with two connected levels comprising eight key factors influencing the quality of the project–service systems and nine key quality criteria that assist in evaluating the project–service systems.

Offering extra services is crucial for successful project-oriented organizations to deliver more customer value. The value of servitization is the combined value of products and services. The failure of one of these components to satisfy customers leads to the collapse of the whole system, which entails the need for a balanced-focus quality system toward projects and services.

This study contributes to the quality of servitization in project-oriented organizations, arguing that a balance between service orientation and project orientation is preferred to increase customer value and reduce the clash and ambiguity between project operations and service provision.

The purpose of this paper is to identify key aspects of business model development for sustainable apparel consumption, as actors show an increasing interest in product‒service systems. This purpose should be seen from a retailers’ perspective so as to develop sustainable solutions for long-term survival in the apparel industry when meeting consumer preferences for fashion as well as an increasing interest in consuming less. Further, this is from a perspective in an economy where sharing and circularity are potential drivers for changing consumer patterns.

The study is based on the apparel retailer Houdini Sportswear and its business model development from a traditional model of selling sportswear to a more future-oriented model where sustainability is more salient. The data for analysis were collected through interviews with employees within the studied company. The interviews have been guided by overarching themes covering relevant areas of interest for this study.

Overall, the paper shows how sustainability can be included in strategic development, from product idea, product development, production and sales/rental to repair, reuse and finally recycling. The paper also highlights potential obstacles in a developed business model with increased sustainability, including technological platforms, distribution networks for collecting and returning products and consumer consumption preferences. There are a few intertwined factors to be considered on different societal levels to achieve long-term success.

This study contributes an increased understanding of how more sustainable solutions can be included when developing business models. While the manufacture, distribution and consumption of clothes have an impact on the environment, some retailers and producers want to reduce this environmental impact. One alternative is to change the way clothes are consumed, to include more sharing and circularity.

There is a window of opportunity within the area of design for sustainability for services marketing academics and practitioners to offer their knowledge and experience to manufacturing companies and academics. Over the last decade there has been a growing interest in services within the field of sustainable development. Services are viewed as a dematerialized alternative to existing products, with reduced environmental impact (i.e. less material and less energy use to fulfil a certain need). The services considered by academics in the field of sustainable development are those related to products or those substituting products. These services are often called “eco‐efficient services”. Academics focusing on the development of eco‐efficient services can use elements of theory and experience available within the services marketing discipline. Services marketing academics and practitioners can help in developing blueprints and processes to facilitate manufacturing companies to shift towards a more service‐intensive way of doing business. This paper calls for cross‐disciplinary collaboration.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the interaction between access-based consumption (ABC) and consumer culture in the specific context of baby products, and connect the two streams of consumer research and design theory, by associating ABC with product service systems (PSS) which are seen as desirable as they offer a promise of sustainability.

Within an action research approach consisting of the establishment of a pilot service provision, we conducted ethnographies including in-depth interviews and focus groups.

The adoption of access-based provisions is constrained by low compatibility with consumer culture. Consumers are concerned with the provision’s ability to satisfy their needs, what this mode of consumption says about them, and the extent to which it associates them with communities of practice.

The limitations are the typical ones of action research, which is linked to a unique, researcher-generated context where the researcher is also a participant, and therefore are difficult to generalize.

The large-scale implementation of PSS underpinning ABC is problematic as it challenges consumers’ needs for self-expression and affiliation; however, we found that consumers in this specific context are responsive to the environmental efficiency of PSS.

Our research explores the intersection between consumer research and design, and consumers’ response to sustainable business models which underpin ABC.