Press release of the workshop “Product Innovation – Key to Sustainable Future”

Sustainable products have been collected and displayed in Green Street, located at 45 Bat Su, Ha Noi

Project Sustainable Products Innovation (SPIN) organize a workshop on “Product Innovation – Key for Sustainable Future” with the aim to report the project’s achievements and share its experiences in product innovation in the four-year implementation in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The workshop would provide a comprehensive overview of product innovation practice and the prospects towards sustainability in Vietnam in particular and in Southeast Asia in general.

PRESS RELEASE

“PRODUCT INNOVATION – KEY TO SUSTAINABLE FUTURE”

HA NOI November 14th 2013 – Project Sustainable Products Innovation (SPIN) organize a workshop on “Product Innovation – Key for Sustainable Future” with the aim to report the project’s achievements and share its experiences in product innovation in the four-year implementation in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. The workshop would provide a comprehensive overview of product innovation practice and the prospects towards sustainability in Vietnam in particular and in Southeast Asia in general. 

SPIN has worked with more than 500 small and medium entrepreneurs in 4 sectors, namely Textile, Furniture, Handicraft and Packaging; supported them to innovate products at the link: Product design (Re-design and New-design), Product strategy, Clean technology consultancy and transfer. As a result, under the tight collaboration between these companies and SPIN’s experts and designers, 2000 products have been re-designed and new-designed to be friendly to the environment, non-poisoned to human’s health, specially, potential to be massively launched to the market.

Based on the methodology of Clean technology and Efficient Natural resources Use, 85 Laos companies have innovated their products in design and 85 Cambodia companies have focus on inside-innovation. In Vietnam, the process of product innovation has not been limited in the sphere of a company but expanded to form a value chain of companies who operate in the same sectors to support each other in production. In Laos and Cambodia, the companies have been oriented to be adaptive to changing environment, in parallel; Vietnam companies have an active access based on transferred technologies which are clustered and developed by SPIN to be suitable for specific contexts of companies and the natural conditions of Vietnam.

This model and innovative business practices would help entrepreneurs enhance their competitiveness and social responsibility as well as environmental friendliness of products.

Entrepreneurs who involve in SPIN project have been raised their awareness and capacity of product innovation and production towards sustainability. Regarding this, Mr. Nguyen Hong Long, Regional Coordinator of SPIN project, shares: “Through SPIN’s workshops and training courses, most of companies have comprehended that it would be not too difficult to innovate their products and still ensure their competitiveness. These companies have been motivated to take action in product innovation with knowledge equipped and technologies transferred in order to use efficiently natural resources and utilize the waste to create the input materials for production.”

More than 30 sustainable technologies have been developed, utilized and clustered into smaller groups to be applied in specific contexts of business and natural conditions of Vietnam. In details, there are three most successful applied groups which are Renewable Energy, Renewable Materials and Zero-waste Knowledge Farm. The group of renewable energy includes solar energy and gasifier for residents and industry which are applied in companies producing mushroom, bamboo products such as Ngoc Dong, Hiep Hoa…The group of renewable materials has been implemented in producing furniture, green composite pots, coiling bamboo products…

Specially, the model of zero-waste knowledge farming named I-Nature embodies 25 sustainable technologies to create circle processes to keep the balance of the environment for the growth of plants and cattle. This model has been developed from traditional agricultural model with applied new technologies, resulting in zero-waste organic farming which causing no harm to environment and human’s health. Now, the model has been deployed at 10 households in Ba Vi and Soc Son, which contributes to their income.

According to Mr. Nguyen Hong Long, SPIN has created groups of sustainable technologies and a community of entrepreneurs with strong commitment to sustainable development, which would be the foundation for sustainable future in Vietnam.

At the workshop, Dr. Marcel Crul, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, presents the methodology of product innovation used in SPIN project and the typical case study in Vietnam. Ms. Nguyen Thi Bich Hoa, Vice-director of Asian Institute of Technology Center in Vietnam, shares about Building product innovation capacity for entrepreneurs in Vietnam. As a result, Sustainable products have been collected and displayed in Green Street, located at 45 Bat Su, which was official open in September 2013.

Available at http://scp.vn