Today’s innovation processes are still underpinned by a vocabulary shaped by the assumption of effectively unlimited and low-cost, low-impact access to resources. That framing continues to be at the core of how value creation and competitiveness are understood, how innovation is measured, and what is designed to deliver. In practice, vocabulary feeds into metrics, metrics shape processes, and these in turn define outcomes and broader impacts. It is time we start experimenting with a different vocabulary for innovation.
The current vocabulary of business innovation was largely shaped during a period characterised by abundant resources, expanding supply chains and relatively low material costs. Such an understanding of the surrounding reality naturally reinforced logics centred around scale, growth, expansion and throughput.
Concepts such as market penetration, product turnover, transaction frequency and volume growth became deeply embedded in corporate language as well as in the metrics used to define business success itself.
Today, the operating context for businesses is changing significantly. Resource price volatility, geopolitical tensions around critical production inputs, affordability pressures, spatial constraints in urban environments and increasing pressure on ecosystems are progressively redefining the competitive landscape. At the same time, societies continue to reassess what constitutes quality, flexibility, convenience and value in everyday life.
Against this background, some of the assumptions underpinning prevailing innovation models deserve to be revisited. Previous innovation paradigms emerged within a fundamentally different economic and material context.
The challenge is that much of the language inherited from that period continues to shape decision-making even as the underlying conditions evolve.
Vocabulary matters more than it may initially appear. It influences what organisations strive for, what they measure and ultimately what they recognise as innovation. Vocabulary shapes metrics; metrics shape incentives; incentives shape innovation processes, business outcomes and broader societal impacts.
A company measuring innovation primarily through sales volume, replacement cycles or expansion rates will tend to optimise for throughput. A company examining customer value per unit of resource employed may arrive at very different forms of innovation altogether.
This may sound abstract, but in practice it directly influences how products are designed, how services are structured, what types of investments are prioritised and which forms of creativity are encouraged inside organisations. Part of the challenge may simply be that the vocabulary inherited from industrial-era innovation no longer fully captures the realities many organisations are beginning to face.
Expressions such as ‘resource intelligence’, ‘value density’, ‘adaptive functionality’ or ‘need-centric innovation’ are emerging attempts to describe forms of competitiveness that rely less on material throughput and more on intelligently delivered utility, flexibility and resilience.
The objective here is not to establish rigid theoretical categories or definitive terminology. This is not a theoretical exercise. The purpose is more practical: to experiment with concepts that may help innovation practitioners better navigate a world shaped by resource constraints, changing patterns of consumption and evolving forms of value creation.
The idea of value density is particularly relevant in this context. Conventionally, value density refers to the ratio between the value of an item and the physical space or weight it occupies. A small but highly valuable object has high value density, while large and inexpensive products tend to have lower value density.
Applied to innovation more broadly, the concept opens an interesting question: how can organisations create greater functionality, adaptability, satisfaction or utility with lower levels of material and energy input?
For decades, value creation was often associated with greater material intensity: larger products, additional features, and accelerated replacement cycles. Increasingly, however, competitive advantage may become linked to entirely different capabilities.
Multifunctionality, modularity, adaptability, long-life design and resource-conscious value creation point towards innovation models capable of delivering high levels of utility without proportionally increasing material throughput.
A similar evolution can be observed around customer-centricity. Many innovation processes remain strongly product-oriented, even when framed as customer-focused. In practice, this often leads to incremental optimisation of existing products rather than a deeper exploration of the underlying contexts shaping how people live, work and consume.
Once innovation processes begin examining adaptability, convenience, spatial efficiency, accessibility, functionality or wellbeing more directly, the innovation landscape expands considerably. Repair ecosystems, reconfigurable products, access-based services and multifunctional systems, for instance, become logical extensions of a broader understanding of value creation.
At the same time, resource constraints themselves are increasingly becoming strategic business variables rather than external environmental considerations. Exposure to critical raw material dependencies, supply chain fragility, energy costs and water stress is beginning to influence industrial strategies and innovation priorities across sectors.
In this context, resource intelligence may progressively become as important to competitiveness as digital intelligence became over the last two decades.
What emerges from this discussion is a call to update some of the concepts through which innovation is imagined, measured and pursued. Many of the terms that defined business success during the industrial expansion of the twentieth century remain important, but they may no longer be sufficient on their own to navigate a resource-constrained and rapidly changing world.
Acknowledging boundaries does not represent the end of innovation. Quite on the contrary, it may become one of its most important drivers.
Emerging Vocabulary
The terms below do not aim to establish fixed theoretical categories. They are intended as practical and evolving concepts that may help organisations, designers, researchers and innovation practitioners better articulate emerging forms of value creation.
Resource intelligence: The capacity to create high levels of utility, functionality and human value while minimising material, energy, land and water requirements across the lifecycle of products and services.
Value density: The amount of useful value, adaptability, functionality or satisfaction delivered per unit of resource employed.
Need-centric innovation: An innovation approach focused on understanding and responding to underlying human needs and contexts rather than primarily optimising products or maximising throughput.
Adaptive functionality: The ability of products, systems or spaces to evolve, reconfigure or perform multiple functions over time.
Multifunctionality: Design approaches enabling products or services to fulfil several functions simultaneously, reducing redundant material consumption.
Resource-conscious value creation: The development of business models and solutions that integrate awareness of material constraints, resource dependencies and long-term resilience into value creation processes.
Human-centred resource innovation: An approach combining resource intelligence with a deep understanding of behavioural and social dimensions of human wellbeing and everyday life.
Emanuele di Francesco
World Resources Forum