Corporate Innovation in the Fast Lane: Environmental Technologies and Planning the New Industrial Metabolism

Abstract

Some of the largest new industries, like software and telecomputing, have profound implications for the environment. They will in many sectors make movement of people and goods between locations un- necessary, thereby reducing the largest source of transport pollution. Moreover, increasingly we will miniaturise and computerise all of our material technology. In an attempt to give increased salience to the impact of developing environmental technologies to corporate performance, we have chosen three case studies for investigation and analysis: the environmental car, the environmental house and the environmental factory. In all three cases, rapidly developing technologies have been given greater impetus by the promise of enhanced competitiveness as well as by a growing awareness of the finite limits of the old industrial and social approaches.