KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND ECO-INNOVATION: ISSUES AND ORGANIZATIONAL CHALLENGES TO SMALL AND MEDIUM ENTERPRISES

At the design stage of a product or process, the environmental dimension is becoming a major issue, but designers are poorly equipped to handle it. The design or re-design expected in the product cycle is done with resources that are combined, which are associated, leading to the generation of new knowledge. To help SMEs in the development of their product, we propose a methodological approach that will allow to respect eco-innovative goal. As a starting point, a qualitative multi-criteria matrix will allow prioritization of all impacts for environment. A customized application of the inventive TRIZ principles (Russian acronym for theory of solving inventive problems Teorija Reshenija Izobretateliskih Zadatch) will help to choose eco-innovative solutions. To this aim, we have created a new approach: Eca TRIZ, based on new contradiction matrix. It was tested in various situations presented during the "24 Hours of innovation" competition. Some of them are presented in this research paper.