NEW YORK, NY – In an era marked by climate risk, social inequality, and rising public scrutiny, innovation is no longer just about outperforming competitors—it’s about addressing the world’s most urgent challenges. A new study offers a framework for how firms can design innovation systems that align with societal and environmental goals without losing sight of business performance.
In the paper “Better Innovation for a Better World,” published in the Journal of Marketing, Columbia Business School’s Professor Olivier Toubia, the Glaubinger Professor of Business, and his co-authors—University of British Columbia Professor Darren Dahl, University of Tennessee Professor Charles Noble, and WU Vienna Universit Professor Martin Schreier—present a forward-looking framework for what they call Better World (BW) Innovation. The conceptual paper explores how companies, governments, and institutions can redesign the innovation process to prioritize not just economic return but also sustainability, equity, health, and broader societal well-being. Rather than offering a prescriptive model, the paper draws on marketing theory, organizational behavior, and innovation strategy to develop a roadmap for business leaders, policymakers, and scholars. The authors identify four key areas where BW innovation practices must evolve:
- Rethinking the innovation process, including how companies move beyond traditional customer-centricity to account for systemic, environmental, and societal needs.
- Redesigning organizational structures and incentives to support long-term, multi-stakeholder innovation.
- Understanding consumer behavior, including how and when to encourage or discourage adoption of products based on BW outcomes.
- Building markets and ecosystems that support sustained innovation through cross-sector alliances, public policy, and inclusive participation.
Unlike conventional innovation models that focus narrowly on profit or consumer convenience, BW innovation shows that long-term business success is increasingly tied to a firm’s ability to respond to stakeholder expectations for sustainability, transparency, and social impact. The study is conceptual and theory-building, laying the groundwork for future empirical research.
To learn more about the cutting-edge research being conducted, please visit the Columbia Business School.
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