Environmental Innovation: An Opportunity For Both Profitable And Environmentally Friendly Actions In The Private Sector

In the last decades, the demand for more responsible businesses from the civil societyhas been constantly growing. It pushes companies to innovate and to change the way they aredoing their business and managing their operations. New regulations, constraints on resourcesand new consumption habits are now emerging. This new context challenges the privatesector to adapt itself. Behind this new challenge lies an incredible new opportunity to bothcreate growth, jobs and a positive impact on our environment.The aim of this thesis is to provide some key recommendations on how to implementenvironmental innovation in a concrete business context. This new discipline aspires tointegrate environmental protection within corporate strategies through innovation and with asystemic approach. What does it concretely mean? What does it consist of? How can it bedeployed? What are the competences required to make this approach a success? How can Iconvince my stakeholders? This thesis will try to provide lines of inquiry to address all ofthese questions through both a conceptual and a practical approach.Innovation by definition aims to take to an end user a new concept or product.Environmental innovation is a specific branch of innovation where environmental protectionis at the centre of all attention. It seeks to foster the creation of new products or services withminimized environmental impacts. In the light of theoretical concepts on innovation andenvironmental protection, we will present concrete examples of what could be environmentalinnovation in the aviation industry.Afterwards, works carried out at Air France will be presented in detail to provide evenmore concrete examples of what could be accomplished with an environmental innovationapproach. These works targeted the products and services of Air France and have been carriedout under the name of eco-design. Works on the new economy long-haul tableware and theloyalty program mailing campaigns will be presented for this purpose.As an answer to our modern society’s issues, environmental innovation represents anengaging and reality based solution. It is an endless process, which targets permanentimprovement over time. It does not intend to solve the entire environmental crisis on its ownbut advances an inspiring move for the industry as well as a mean to accomplish bothprofitable and environmentally friendly actions at the same time.