New article on how to change the public perception of sustainable innovations – the case of Tesla
New article by Lucas Miehé and his colleagues Maximilian Palmié, Johanna Mair, and Joakim Wincent. It explores how Tesla leveraged product design strategies and reputational politics to induce favorable customer evaluations of electric vehicles.
Developing innovative, eco-friendlier products that gain traction in the mass market remains a persistent challenge for many firms. To bring consumers to choose “greener” alternatives over conventional products, firms need to overcome prevailing product evaluations that favor the traditional solutions. Drawing on 54 interviews and nearly 2,000 pages of archival data, our analysis identifies three product design strategies that increased the appeal of Tesla’s initial models: incorporating discontinuous technological solutions, optimizing the products in traditional evaluation criteria, and creating an ecosystem of complementary products.
As the design strategies came at the expense of a minimal environmental footprint, they entailed the risk of attracting blame for compromising on the environmental performance of potentially eco-friendly cars and committing “greenwashing.” To minimize this risk, Tesla complemented its design strategies with three strategies of reputational politics to avoid such blame: incorporating discontinuous technological solutions, anticipating favorable developments, encouraging customer advocates, and diverting accountability.
The study is published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management (ABS/AJG: 4; IF: 10.5): Download https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12732
Lucas acknowledges the support of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy as part of the SWEET consortium PATHFNDR.