Footwear manufacturers Jacobson Group (Jacobson), which includes the Gola brand, engaged with ECO-I NW as they were unsure how to start their journey to net zero.

Phase one, delivered through group workshops, helps businesses to identify short, medium, and long-term goals and develop sustainability action plans. This enabled Jacobson to identify that their approach to prototyping produces significant CO2e emissions, presenting an excellent opportunity for innovation.

Typically, Jacobson produces 4,000 to 6,000 physical prototypes each year; these are manufactured in Southeast Asia, flown to the UK, and sent to suppliers worldwide, before being selected for full production.

Jacobson applied for one-to-one support to digitise the prototyping process, starting with one of their most popular shoe designs, the Harrier - 3,000 Harrier prototypes are produced annually. Through our collaboration, we’re creating an editable, 3D digital model, which can be used by their in-house design team to produce prototype designs without the need for manufacturing of physical prototypes. The designs can then be emailed to customers and orders taken digitally. This new process will result in significant time, money, and CO2e savings.

We have calculated that this project will save a minimum of 100 tonnes of CO2e per year, for the Harrier design alone. This is equivalent to approximately 330,000kms driven in a petrol car (nearly the distance from the earth to the moon. Source: How much is a tonne of CO2? | myclimate).

Jacobson has stated that this project has enabled them to advance their plans by two to three years.

Our approach to helping businesses transition to a net-zero economy is grounded in several core elements.



Be empathy led. In order to ask businesses to be empathetic to the planet, we must first be empathetic to their needs and concerns. This doesn't mean that profit or maintaining incumbent business models should be prioritised over the demands of the climate emergency, but it is vital that we understand and are responsive to their concerns, needs, and challenges in making this shift.

Start at the end. Businesses can't plan for sustainability if they don't know what a sustainable world looks like or what their organisation needs to look like to succeed in that world. We begin by asking businesses to imagine what their organisation might look like in a utopian society, and then work backwards to their current practices.

Embrace creativity. Ideating an ideal future world requires creative thinking and letting go of today's ‘norms.’ We found creative and co-creative activities and settings essential. We specifically chose creative thinking spaces (for example, above a pub) to serve this purpose.

Think like a designer. Asking businesses to solve future challenges without first identifying the problem leads to sub-optimal outcomes. We've found that using design-centric approaches to help businesses identify and understand their environmental problems is the most effective way to reframe those challenges as opportunities for innovation.

We are thrilled to have our innovative delivery model nominated for an award. Our approach has been developed and refined through academic research, and we are now seeking to share our methodology with the wider business and academic community. Through the UK Science Innovation Network, we will be collaborating with academic colleagues across Europe to showcase the approach, tailor it to local needs, and ultimately see its impacts expanded to a much wider audience.

Our commitment to academic excellence is reflected in our plans to publish academic papers that will demonstrate our method showcase, its results, and highlight the barriers and enablers to sustainable innovation within the SME community. We are also developing case studies that will illustrate the success of the innovation projects undertaken by our alumni businesses, including video and Research Excellence Framework impact case studies.

The current format of the ECO-I programme will close in June 2023 (in-line with European Regional Development Funding guidelines) however we remain committed to supporting the innovation journeys of our alumni.

We will continue to provide businesses with access to support, funding, and expertise from our academics and the wider innovation community, and we are seeking alternative funding streams to continue our SME support in the future, for instance via Innovate UK and the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. We welcome any opportunities to collaborate with our colleagues in Europe so that our approach can continue to have impact for many years to come.