Design Flagship Methodology

For the domains of textiles and building materials, two case studies were selected to engage in transdisciplinary action research in order to better understand the arena of material transitions. A series of workshops were organized to facilitate engagement between researchers and case holders where different participatory tools and research frameworks were used to understand the opportunities and challenges for each case study in relation to their ability to contribute to the material transition. For the textile domain the following case studies were researched: Fine wool and hair (e.g. merino wool, in the Netherlands) and regenerative cotton (India/Netherlands). For the building materials domain, it was Miscanthus as a potential for building materials (Netherlands) and wooden framed buildings (Netherlands).

Additionally, a nature-Readiness framework was designed to evaluate the scalability readiness of innovations, offering a rapid assessment method that gauges the environmental readiness of an innovation. It has been developed through integrating the work of Sartas et al. (2020) and the framework developed by the WBCSD (World Business Council for Sustainable Development). Sartas et al. (2020) focused on the socio-technological aspects of scaling, whereas the WBCSD framework focused on the readiness level on action for nature. Integrating these three aspects (technological, societal and environmental) can be useful in assisting development teams (e.g., entrepreneurs, companies, researchers) in understanding the readiness of their innovations to scale, serving as a guide to consider all dimensions of sustainability.