Openness

This strategy is all about using transparency in order to incentivise sustainable behaviour from consumers, but also the organisations they buy from. It requires provision of the right information at the right time, providing transparency about a product, experience, manufacturing process or transaction, without overwhelming the consumer. The objective is to empower the user by placing more of the responsibility in their hands. If they don’t know what a product lifecycle entails then how can they take responsibility for whether they make the purchase, and how they use it? When that information is carefully designed into the physical fabric of a product, or the touchpoints of an experience they’ve bought into, it’s a different story.

Providing the facts can raise the bar on the supply side too. Claims can be made but trust can’t be built with consumers unless those promises are delivered upon. This open approach ideally covers supply chain, materials, manufacture and mechanics, ethics, and plans for the future. In recent years this approach has become strongly linked with “wiki” and open-source culture.

This culture, sometimes known as informationalisation, makes the product or service more valuable and beneficial to the user by building in data. By providing relevant, timely, accurate, easy-to-read data, new or superior benefits are possible. Transparency and openness can serve to create a competitive advantage by explicitly stating something which a competitor won’t reveal. This can be executed in increasingly sophisticated ways. Information about a product can be given through its design rather than through surrounding blurb. Packaging can be reimagined to allow consumers to make more informed choices which they can be proud of. Organisations can use communications to share the challenges they face in shifting their operations in line with a more circular economy, and bring consumers along on that journey. Transparency can create reinforcing loops of incentive, encouraging better decisions on both the supply and demand side.