Service innovation and sustainable construction: Analyses of wood vis-à-vis other construction projects

Abstract

Wood-based solutions are promoted for sustainable construction. In parallel, technological applications are expected to elevate construction and built environment to a new level of energy and resource efficiency, and enhance the environmental as well as human health and wellbeing impacts by smart bundling of products and services. Policies call for a profound system change in construction. Such shift necessitates technological and non-technological innovations as well as new conceptualizations. This research elaborates an analytic framework to discuss system change in the complex product systems of construction. Wood-based solutions are assessed vis-à-vis other sustainable construction projects to detect service innovation as new outputs, inputs, and processes in the markets, and consider the system change potential in evolving product-service systems (PSS). Analyses of eight projects and altogether 89 companies in Finland indicate that while wood-based solutions aim at industrial efficiency in the established construction processes, parallel sustainable construction projects and the contributing companies exemplify more versatile service innovations. The industrial efficiency unfolding from the sustainable construction niches and the company operations in the markets illustrates evolving PSS. The data exemplifies how the increasing integration leads into dismantling of operations and new configurations of tasks, and the increasing standardization due to fine-granule modularity and customization leads to increasing diversification of operations. Alternative scenarios should be explored to assess the systemic changes and their impacts on clean technology solutions. • Analytic frame to assess evolving PSS in construction complex product systems. • Conceptual elaboration on service innovation at company, project and system levels. • Wood focuses on industrial efficiency with established construction regime parameters. • Evolving PSS extend industrial wood efficiency beyond material substitution view. • Sustainability transitions call for assessing parallel PSS trajectories conjointly.