Challenges in establishing sustainable innovation

Within the field of information systems an interest in environmental issues has driven the agenda for research from green IT improvement to sustainable innovation. A challenge yet to investigate is how sustainable innovation involving a cluster of actors from multiple settings should be 1) designed and 2) orchestrated so that the innovation performed enables sustainable change. Processes for launching sustainable innovation should consequently be analysed in order to further investigate this notion. In northern Europe there is today a strong drive towards enabling initiatives utilizing mobile information technology improving the everyday transportation of people. This paper analysis the launch of a research and innovation cluster with the aim to develop information infrastructures and processes that stimulate distributed development of digital services for everyday travel. Events performed during the two-year start-up have been analysed identifying essential actions for network design and innovation orchestration, creating hypotheses, which enables further research about the establishment of sustainable innovation.