Dear Daniel,

I'm strongly convinced sustainability practice can be obtained only if equally combined with economical, social, and technological dimensions. The balance between the three + one (technological) dimensions has to be obtained within the application domain where the sustainable innovation is implemented. The TBL concepts itself doesn't explain nothing more than a diverse approach. There are several papers discussing about this approach outlining limits and opportunities. I analysed some of them in my three recent papers (attached) trying to understand how to step from simple "motto or definition" to some more practical and operationalised usage of the concept.

More than stressing the presence of the three dimensions (but the technological is mainly missed) my personal idea is that one should focus on the interaction between them discarding and old trade-offing approach in spite of a win-win strategy to reshape innovation in sustainability.

Hoping to help you in investigating this interesting question.

Bests

Flavio

Hello Flavio, yes, I do think that the TBL approach leaves a lot out. And pinpointing exactly what is out is what I want to do. Thank you very much for your answer and your papers. Best wishes from Brazil. 

Yes, please, have a look at this paper: http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/852/art%253A10.1007%252Fs13520-012-0019-3.pdf?auth66=1415636883_032d801acddeae35084a9a1c04f0e911&ext=.pdf

Regards, Farley S. Nobre

Hello Farley, thank you. The address is not accessing, for some reason. Can you give me the name of the paper and the journal? Thank you. 

The key paper that you should look at is  Norman, Wayne, and Chris MacDonald. "Getting to the bottom of" triple bottom line"." Business Ethics Quarterly (2004): 243-262.

This paper has been quoted 600 times, looking at those other paper you can identify the stream of theoretical critique on the triple botton line

Hello Giorgio Locatelli, thank you very much indeed. Best wishes from Brazil. Daniel

The "triple bottom line" or "Three pillar model" for identifying sustainable product systems is not new and constitutes in my mind a minimum requirement. Adding technology is a good idea, but makes the  model more complex. In comparing existing products (goods and services), as in environmental LCA, it is in general assumed that the products already exist and thus the necessary technologies exist already, but may produce more or less benign results.

A combination of LCA, LCC and social LCA may be used to find out the best solution. In doing so, you have to use the same functional unit and the same system boundaries. This is discussed in the last chapter of:

Walter Kloepffer and Birgit Grahl: "Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)", Wiley-VCH 2014,

a text book and monograph

Regards

Walter Kloepffer

Dear Daniel,

have a look on our paper "When sustainable development risks losing its meaning. Delimiting the concept with a comprehensive literature review and a conceptual

model" (Cleaner Production - you could find in Scopus). You could find some elements in contrast with the TBL theory. Feel free to contact me.

Abraço!

In the textbook I coauthored with Nicholas Ashford (see the link below), we introduce an important variant of the triple bottom line - i.e., Environment, Economy, and Employment/Work. With the growing concern about job displacement via technological innovation (see the "Second Machine Age" for the most recent commentary on this issue) and the related concern of growing income/wealth inequality (see, for example, Thomas Piketty's work), a failure to explicitly consider "employment" as part of the [sustainable] development agenda means that we are simply hoping that economic development will resolve these problems.  

On page 2 of the textbook, we make the following statement that captures this idea: "Just as thinking about the environment before industrial development is planned and implemented is necessary to optimize environmental quality, consideration of labor concerns also requires deliberate and intelligent actions before embarking on (re)industrialization efforts in guiding industrial transformations."

Here is another quote from the book that discusses our framing of sustainable development (page 8): "The sustainability triangle is often depicted as the economy, the environment, and social concerns, or the economy, the environment, and equity. Because all policies that affect the economy and environment have social effects and because the distributional consequences of differential access to necessary goods and services and different environmental burdens have significant equity consequences, we do not relegate the third corner of the triangle to either. Instead, we argue that employment should occupy the third corner of the triangle because employment is the enabling activity that allows workers and citizens to achieve economic, environmental, and social well- being and because employment is the focus of traditional government concerns and policies, along with economic and environmental policies. Because an important aspect of this book focuses on changes in current government policies, the depiction of a triangle that is consistent with policy areas better serves our purposes. We argue for attention to equity within each corner and further acknowledge the importance of culture in interpreting the triangle. What is an acceptable distributional disparity in one culture is different in another, and the importance work and environment have in one system may be very different in another. Broad, participatory mechanisms of affected stakeholders are needed to account for the acceptability of different policy mixes and outcomes."

I hope you find this perspective of some interest/value. 

http://ralphphall.wordpress.com/technology-globalization-and-sustainable-development/