We are in the early stages of a sustainability revolution. Climate change is forging a new global dialogue that may prove to be unlike anything before it in human history. That dialogue has already shifted from a focus on the scientific evidence of global warming to the need for urgent action.

What will be tested in the years to come is our ability to change direction.

Mitigating climate change (and adapting to a rise in global temperatures) points to an historic shift in the past trajectory of development. The transition to a sustainable economy, to a low carbon (and for Australia, a low water) economy, represents an unparalleled challenge to our systems of social and technical innovation. Incremental improvement – doing more efficiently what we currently do – will not be enough. We have only decades to transform the 'carbon' basis of our economy; the best current modelling suggests we will need a global reduction in annual CO2 production of between 60-80% (compared to current levels) by 2050. With such targets, we are not talking just about the re-construction of our world, but about its re-invention.

If ever we needed the spirit of entrepreneurial action, of creative destruction, it is now.
Change is needed rapidly; the effects of global warming (e.g. rainfall. or the incidence of significant weather events) appear to be accelerating; the slower the response the greater the long-term social and economic cost. We need to find ways to urgently overcome the ‘inertia of the market’, the inherently slow process of changing consumer and producer expectations and investments in future products, services, built environments and life-styles. We need a paradigm shift in the way that we think about systems of production and consumption, and about quality of life and prosperity.

This is what we mean by 'eco-innovation'.

VEIL proposes a new way to accelerate eco-innovation in Victoria. VEIL aims to influence the 'marketplace of ideas'; but more importantly the VEIL concept is based on a recognition that that marketplace is strongly shaped by concepts and visions of future goods and services emanating from producers and researchers. In fact the dynamic of a rapidly changing economy has meant that these future visions of goods and services now form an important 'conceptual market', increasingly vital for business competition. Future product concepts are widely marketed to test potential directions for production and to build the reputation of companies that need to be seen by their business and consumer audiences as being innovative and 'in command of future technology'. With modern communications and design skills these future concepts are increasingly 'real' and seductive; consumer response and feedback is critical to investment decisions.

This conceptual market is pervasive, shaping expectations of the future. But whilst this market may be innovative it is inherently conservative, generally allowing only for incremental change in terms of environmental performance.

VEIL works to bring public research and designers from public institutions (university design schools) into the conceptual market to provide a radical alternative set of visions of possibilities that extend beyond incremental change. The aim is to shape both consumer and producer expectations at the same time.

Those future visions are used to 'seed' 'vision-driven' projects for short-term development and to identify emerging social and technical innovations that could be precursors of change. .

(To read something of the history of this idea - see "EcoLab a jump towards sustainability, part 1 and 2, 2002" by Chris Ryan,  in the library section of this site (reprinted from the MIT Journal of Industrial Ecology) and "The Melbourne 2032 project" by Chris Ryan. )