Integrating Sustainability Goals into Innovation at Henkel

PRACTITIONER TAKEAWAYS

• To be meaningful, sustainability assessments need to account for the whole product life cycle. This requires strong partnerships with suppliers, customers, and end users, beginning already in the new product development cycle.
• Culture is an essential ingredient: We need to ensure that sustainability is not just a checklist but a core value for our employees and our business.
• Innovation and product management are both part of the product life cycle: How we assess sustainability impact for a new product in development needs to be consistent with how that product will be assessed once it is fully commercial. The methodology a company uses in its innovation process cannot be different from the one it uses in product line management.