Creating value, not wasting resources: sustainable innovation strategies

It is well-accepted in academic and public debate that society has overused natural resources. Business managers in consequence face a normative framework where products need to become more ‘sustainable’. The paper characterises the mechanisms and logic that make ‘[environmentally] sustainable innovation strategies’. Those mechanisms highlight multiple value creation and sustaining value beyond the original new product lifecycle. They yield as much utility as possible from the embedded natural resources. And they avoid creating waste. ‘Multiple value creation’ asks managers to revaluate the attrite product or to make customers change their use patterns. The paper then demonstrates how to extend the ‘old’ logic of innovation with a phase of revaluation: a phase promoting further use of the product and/or material. Our concept is empirically illustrated by two industry case examples. Namely, the copier industry and the emerging automotive lithium-ion batteries industry. We provide a patent analysis in order to demonstrate the assessment of extended life cycles, for the case of ‘recovery of raw materials from disposed products’.

Grounded Theory methods in child psychotherapy research

This article considers the place of qualitative research in psychoanalysis and child psychotherapy. It discusses why research methodology for many years occupied so small a place in these fields, and examines the cultural and social developments since the 1960s which have changed this situation, giving formal methods of research much greater significance. It reflects on the different pressures to develop formal research methods which arise both from outside the psychoanalytic field, as a condition of its continued professional survival, and from within it, where its main aim is the development of fundamental psychoanalytic knowledge, It suggests that the conduct of mainly quantitative research into treatment outcomes is largely a response to these external pressures, whilst the main benefits to be gained from the development of qualitative research methods, such as Grounded Theory, are in facilitating the knowledge-generating capacities and achievements of child psychotherapists themselves. The paper describes Grounded Theory methods, and explains how they can be valuable in the recognition of hitherto unrecognised meanings and patterns as these are made visible in clinical practice. Finally, it briefly describes five different examples of completed doctoral studies, all of which have added significantly to the knowledge-base of child psychotherapy, and which demonstrate how much can be accomplished using this method of research.

What is narrative research? Starting out

Narrative research has become a very popular field in contemporary social sciences. It promises new fields of inquiry, creative solutions to persistent problems, a way to establish links with other disciplines such as cultural and literary studies, enhanced possibilities of applying research to policy and practice, and a fresh take on the politics of social research (see for instance Andrews et al., 2013 [ 2008]; Andrews et al., 2004 [2000]; Andrews, Squire and Tamboukou,, 2004; Elliott, 2005; Emerson and Frosh, 2004; Freeman, 2009a; Herman, 2009; Hyvarinen et al., 2010; Lieblich et al., 2004; Patterson, 2002; Riessman, 2008; Trahar, 2009; Wells, 2011). This book aims to introduce you, step by step and with contemporary examples, to narrative research in the social sciences. It will give you an overview of a range of narrative methods, and it will situate narrative research in relation to other social science methods. It will show you what narrative research offers, as well as its difficulties. It will do this by drawing on work from a variety of disciplines, in theoretical and applied fields, across diverse topics, from health and the internet, to politics and sexualities, and in a number of different national contexts.