What really changes when companies use Sustainable Product Development tools? Evidence from a study of twelve companies

A study by Blekinge Institute of Technology, Chalmers University of Technology and NATIVA, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production (vol. 572, 2026), interviewed six NATIVA consultants and twelve companies across nine sectors to reconstruct the kind of change that applying academically developed sustainable product development (SPD) tools produces on the business. NATIVA co-authored the research and is the consultancy the researchers used as the case study.

Decades of research have produced more than six hundred methods and tools for sustainable product development and related fields, yet two questions remain open. First, which factors make a tool developed in academia adoptable and adaptable inside companies by consultants, recognized as the intermediaries between research and industry. Second, which industrial impacts can be linked to the application of these tools, given that claimed benefits are rarely verified with empirical data.

To answer them, the study "Impact of sustainable product development tools through intermediaries: A multi-actor study of pathways and conditions" interviewed six NATIVA experts (selected as the case because for more than ten years it has applied academically developed tools together with its clients) to reconstruct the upstream mechanisms of adoption and adaptation. It then interviewed twelve of NATIVA's client companies to observe where impacts emerge and how outcomes vary downstream. The participating companies span nine sectors: Capua 1880, Chiesi Farmaceutici, C.P. Company, Eurotherm, Faba, Florim Ceramiche, Focchi, F.lli Saclà, Kerakoll, OVS, Slowear, Victorinox.

The tool analyzed is Strategic Life Cycle Assessment, or sLCA: a qualitative assessment, guided by sustainability principles and extended across the entire product life cycle, used to identify hotspots and guide prioritization, which consultants complement with quantitative indicators where useful. It builds on the Framework for Strategic Sustainable Development, took shape in the early 2000s as a "Sustainability Product Analysis Matrix" (Byggeth and Broman, 2001) and was set out in its established form as sLCA in 2006 (Ny et al.).

The analysis indicates that adoption of this tool by an intermediary is facilitated by three conditions:

• demonstrated usability and time-effectiveness, already in the early design phases;
• clear visualization and credible traceability of results;
• customizability to the language of the sector.

A further factor, which the consultants interviewed described as essential, is dual competence: a strong academic background combined with a full understanding of how processes work inside the company.

Companies were asked about the effects produced by applying the tools. The questionnaire listed fourteen types of perceived impact on the company and its products (from energy and raw material consumption to reputation, from employee motivation to competitiveness) and asked respondents to rate each on a scale from 1, low impact, to 4, high impact. 10 out of 12 companies responded.

The impacts rated highest:

• increased level of innovativeness;
• increased ability to meet customer needs;
• improved reputation and brand;
• reduction of raw material use.

Then:

• increased competitiveness;
• reduction of energy use.

Last of the fourteen: cost savings. Companies read the ecodesign work primarily as an enabler of innovation and competitiveness. Economic savings follow from technical change, and are not an outcome observed in the short term, as we will see later.

The client cases were also analyzed to explore how the change produced by using the tools unfolds over time and which conditions enable it. A pathway emerges across four levels that arrive at different points in time, fed by how the tool is designed and by how the consultant translates it inside the company, and supported by three conditions: leadership and governance, supplier readiness, regulation and market forces.

The four levels of impact are:

• Cognitive and cultural, the most consistently observed: mindset and shared language across functions. Clients often described it as "incremental for operational solutions, but radical in the very change of mentality and design approach".
• Organizational and decision-making, frequently observed: cross-functional dialogue, prioritization routines, supplier engagement, a view that reaches beyond the company's own gates.
• Technical and measurable, selective and delayed: product and process changes, documented reductions. "There is normally a two-year delay", one consultant quantifies.
• Potential system change, shifts in the value chain and in markets, which the study treats as conditional: it is not observed in this dataset, but is presented as a downstream pathway that may follow when tool use is paired with deliberate work on the enabling conditions.

From the findings the authors derive seven recommendations on designing, translating and embedding these tools so that they produce the greatest impact. They address researchers, consultants and companies:

1. Build a shared language early, anchored in the company's own vocabulary.
2. Combine qualitative framing with targeted quantitative proof: the qualitative sets direction, the quantitative provides credibility and monitoring.
3. Stage the change. Quick wins first, capability building always: visible results early to build trust, capability building throughout to make teams autonomous.
4. Orchestrate cross-functional and supply-chain collaboration: scaling impact requires shared platforms, accessible results, and ambitions paced to what is feasible.
5. Communicate credibly, inside and out: clear language, visualization and traceability for internal buy-in and cautious external use; transparency in assumptions against greenwashing.
6. Co-create the tools jointly and run pilots that feed usability constraints and sector nuances back to researchers.
7. Keep the systemic view, connecting product decisions to broader shifts: product-level improvements must be complemented by shifts in production and consumption systems, step by step.

The study closes by answering the two questions it started from, and the answers confirm the pattern set out above. An academic tool is more readily adopted when it is usable, time-effective, clear in its outputs and customizable to the sector. Its effects appear first in culture and in decisions, later and more selectively in products and processes, and they depend on conditions that go beyond the tool itself: governance, supplier capability and openness, and policy and market signals.

Hence the question the authors pose openly: in the face of the urgency of the challenge, is this impact enough? For system innovation, the tools currently available do not suffice on their own, but they play an important role in transforming company culture, creating alignment and setting priorities: it is from there that change may cascade along supply chains and markets, if conditions are intentionally developed.

On the long-term direction companies agree, while judging current regulation complex and at times detached from industrial realities: they expect it to facilitate sectoral collaboration, and they expect the market to make sustainability a baseline rather than a differentiator. One company holds that sustainability will become "an integral part of the development and management of products, just like quality and safety", the "third leg of that structure that must support the credibility of our products".

Read the full paper.

Impact of sustainable product development tools through intermediaries: A multi-actor study of pathways and conditions Jesko Schulte, Sophie I. Hallstedt, Matilda S. Watz (Blekinge Institute of Technology — Sophie I. Hallstedt also Chalmers University of Technology), Irene Lo Vecchio, Matteo Caprioli, Silvia Zanazzi (NATIVA S.r.l. SB) Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 572, 2026, art. 148906 DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2026.148906 — open access, CC BY 4.0 license

The research was funded in part by the Knowledge Foundation, Sweden, through the SPIRIT Synergy Project, by the GENIE initiative and by the Chalmers Production Area of Advance. The authors thank the participating companies: Capua 1880, Chiesi Farmaceutici, C.P. Company, Eurotherm, Faba, Florim Ceramiche, Focchi, F.lli Saclà, Kerakoll, OVS, Slowear, Victorinox.

Transparency note. Three of the authors — Irene Lo Vecchio, Matteo Caprioli and Silvia Zanazzi — are employees of NATIVA, the consultancy that serves as the embedded case in the study. NATIVA facilitated access to participants and conducted the client interviews following a protocol developed by the academic researchers. All transcripts and other data were analyzed independently by the academic authors, who had full access to the data and final responsibility for interpretation and publication. The study also reports the risk of self-selection in the client sample, mitigated by actively seeking divergent cases and by explicit questions about difficulties and reasons for lack of impact.

This article was written by Irene Lo Vecchio, one of the study's NATIVA co-authors.