Sustainable new products: In today's resource-finite world, survival starts with innovation

摘要

THERE MIGHT BE A PROBLEM with the phrasing of the above headline. Maybe it should be New Products for Sustainability. As a society, we are not sustainable without the new products and technologies that allow us to grow and prosper. From the earliest tribes to the present, those peoples able to innovate survived or, in today's parlance, were sustainable. They discovered sources of energy beyond their own physical strength such as fire, wood, slaves (sadly, someone else's physical strength), hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear and wind. They began with hunting and gathering and then learned animal husbandry and farming. All these activities led to sustainability of various social groups.