Innovation and sustainable development in wood furniture design

What kind of methodology would take into account the sustainability of a product? How to link all the dimensions and protagonists of sustainable development that are traditionally studied separately? Our work takes place in a "critical emancipatory action research" framework (McKerman, 1991) because of the integration of the actor's point of view. The aim of this paper is to present a methodology to evaluate the sustainability degree during the pre-design step (early stage) of a new product. We propose a three-steps approach. First, we characterize the sustainability by both interviewing the actors concerned by the product and reviewing regulations and standards applicated to it. Next, we build a method to evaluate sustainability and in the third step, we evaluate a product in terms of its sustainability. A model based on Life Cycle Assessment that we call Sustainable Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) illustrates our approach. Finally, we reveal an application of our methodology in the sector of wood furniture design in the East of France. The target audience of this study are managers of SMEs: with our methodology, they will be able to evaluate product innovation in a way that favours sustainable development.