Balancing sustainability with tight deadlines in product innovation demands a thoughtful approach. Start by embedding eco-friendly practices into the core of your product criteria. Use project management tools to optimize workflows, ensuring efficiency without compromising on green goals. Regularly revisit priorities to stay aligned with sustainability objectives, even under time pressure. Clear communication across teams is key to maintaining this balance, fostering collaboration to meet both deadlines and environmental commitments.

Considerar a sustentabilidade no desenvolvimento de novos produtos deixou de ser uma vantagem competitiva e se tornou uma obrigação para as empresas, diante da atual situação do planeta e das exigências das novas gerações. Optar por processos e matérias-primas sustentáveis, além de trabalhar com fornecedores certificados, é fundamental para o processo produtivo. No entanto, é essencial realizar uma investigação detalhada dos fornecedores antes de contratá-los, pois a internet e os consumidores estão cada vez mais atentos a escândalos que podem prejudicar gravemente a imagem da empresa. É importante tratar esse assunto com a devida seriedade para evitar um efeito rebote.

Happy New Year! You can't separate them anymore. Prioritize both simultaneously by embedding sustainability into the design process from the start. There is no any other way. Streamline workflows to ensure eco-conscious choices and timely delivery occur in parallel, creating products that meet market & users needs without compromising environmental goals. The sustainability goals are must have moving forward!

We can: Embed Sustainability from the Start: Define Clear Goals: Incorporate sustainability into the project's criteria, such as energy efficiency, recyclable materials, or reduced carbon footprint. Evaluate Lifecycle Impact: Assess environmental impact at every stage, from design to disposal, ensuring sustainability is a non-negotiable metric. Leverage Agile Methodologies: Break the project into smaller, iterative cycles that allow for regular evaluation of both sustainability and progress toward deadlines. Prioritize features or tasks that contribute to both goals, such as reducing resource-intensive processes while maintaining project velocity.

In FMCG, sustainability is a key priority, but tight deadlines often create a tug-of-war. Effective prioritization hinges on collaboration trade-offs and clear goals. Start with aligning on purpose - consider Unilever’s pivot to biodegradable formulations under its Clean Future initiative. Use agile frameworks to balance speed and sustainability, as seen in Nestlé’s shift to recyclable packaging within ambitious timelines. Leverage MVPs to test eco-friendly solutions while staying market-relevant. Finally, foster cross-functional synergy to resolve conflicts and champion innovation that balances short-term pressures with long-term impact. Sustainability isn’t a delay—it’s the future.

Balancing sustainability and deadlines in product innovation requires setting clear priorities by integrating eco-friendly practices early in the design process while ensuring realistic timelines. Effective prioritization involves aligning sustainability goals with key project milestones and collaborating with teams to streamline processes without compromising on quality.

It is definitively a balancing act but can be done. Speed is not antagonist to sustainability if you make the team understand that both are critical. Managing the product innovation through project management and having clarity for deadlines can clearly create innovative solutions to get the tasks done in the right time frame. I have benefited also of having multidisciplinary teams: sometimes one area can overlook or do not be aware of an obstacle that could derail time or sustainability. The more eyes of the different business view are there the less likely the team will miss the target.

It's definitely a challenge, yet it's achievable! Incorporate sustainability from the start to prevent expensive rework down the line. Establish realistic deadlines that permit sustainable practices. Utilize tools such as life cycle assessments to pinpoint areas needing enhancement. Work alongside experts, maintain transparent communication, and monitor your advancement. By emphasizing sustainability throughout your product innovation journey, you can develop eco-friendly products that satisfy deadlines and please customers.

Since most of the applications nowadays are living in the Software Development Lifecycle, I mostly push towards achieving the deadlines first before sustainability. Reasoning here is that after such deadline, the knowledge of the innovation is growing and we can maintain and improve sustainability. What motivates more than an innovation that is helping customers, which you can make even more green?

Let's understand well what innovation means, because if we understand it correctly, there shouldn't be a trade-off between sustainability and timeframes for innovation. Innovation means solving a problem in a new way, more efficiently. Being more efficient should at some point mean being more sustainable. Additionally, when you develop the matrix of functional requirements that the innovation should solve, consider the environmental variables