Insegnamento a.a. 2025-2026

20833 - TECHNOLOGIES AND SYSTEMS FOR SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY

Department of Law


Class timetable
Exam timetable

Course taught in English
Go to class group/s: 31
TS (6 credits - I sem. - OBS  |  ING-IND/13)
Course Director:
DAVIDE CHIARONI

Classes: 31 (I sem.)
Instructors:
Class 31: CLAUDIO SOMASCHINI


Mission & Content Summary

MISSION

The course aims at providing knowledge and understanding about sustainability-oriented de-sign and innovation as a process for designing and developing new products, processes, ser-vices, business models and systems, leveraging the use of new technologies through a human-centered perspective, contributing to the improvement of people and communities’ well-being while respecting the worlds’ natural resources and their regenerative capacity. Students will understand the different dimensions and types of sustainability-oriented innova-tions and their drivers; they will understand the processes, the actors, the design tools, and the collaboration approaches to be used in sustainability-oriented innovation. The course, charac-terized by an active learning approach and the principles of the “hands-on” methodologies, will enable students to apply the relevant techniques and tools to design and develop sustain-able products, processes, services, business models and systems. Specific attention will be dedicated to design for sustainability approaches, including base of pyramid innovation, de-sign thinking, user centered innovation and social innovation. The course covers paradigmatic patterns in sustainability-oriented design and innovation and provides structured activities to experiment and absorb the skills and methodologies acquired in real cases through a project work developed in collaboration with partner companies.

CONTENT SUMMARY

Topic

Description

Basics of innovation management

Innovation strategies, drivers, approaches and challenges

Design driven

innovation

The concept of product meaning; strategies of meaning innovation; differences with innovation models

Framing innovation for sustainability

Different types of innovation for sustainability; drivers and challenges; business model innovation for sustainability; innovation process and key actors

Design methods for problem formulation

Cognitive processes at the basis of idea generation: analogical reasoning; associative thinking; abductive reasoning; tools and principles to support creativity

Design models for sustainability

Main concepts and principles of Design model for sustainability: from eco-design to systemic design for sustainability transition

Collaborative innovation for sustainability

Co-design, key partners and stakeholders of innovation for sustainability; approaches to collaboration; sustainable business model and collaborative business modelling

From user-centred design to systemic design

Design Thinking, Humanity-centred design, systemic design and the Mission Approach to systemic innovation; design idea generation methods.

Technology for sustainable

innovation

Techniques for innovation based on technology roadmapping; technology role in decoupling


Intended Learning Outcomes (ILO)

KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

At the end of the course student will be able to...
  • Identify the main types of, and approaches to, different sustainability-oriented innovation and design.
  • Interpret the societal and technology changes to be leveraged by companies in order to implement a sustainable innovation and design approach.
  • Grasp the systemic and holistic dimensions of the sustainability-oriented innovation and design applied by real business.

APPLYING KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

At the end of the course student will be able to...
  • Apply principles and tools to design new sustainable solutions and business models.
  • Manage the entire process of sustainability-oriented innovation from vision generation to pre-competitive analysis.
  • Assess the impact of the new solutions/business models according to the more relevant sustainability dimensions.

Teaching methods

  • Lectures
  • Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
  • Individual works / Assignments
  • Collaborative Works / Assignments

DETAILS

The classes will be held in-presence in the assigned classrooms on the Bovisa campus. Students are strongly encouraged to attend in-presence classes. The table below shows the classrooms and the class schedule.


Assessment methods

  Continuous assessment Partial exams General exam
  • Oral individual exam
    x
  • Individual Works/ Assignment (report, exercise, presentation, project work etc.)
x    

ATTENDING STUDENTS

In order to achieve the learning outcomes and measure their acquisition by students:

·         Class attendance is strongly recommended; students are expected to actively participate in the case discussion. This aims to test the student’s ability to interact and think critically, applying the concepts presented throughout the course. Active participation will not be formally evaluated but will constitute the basis for the individual assessment in the final exam.

·         An oral exam to critically discuss the theoretical concepts will be held. The individual assessment based on the oral exam accounts for the 50% of the final grade.

·         A project work will be developed to assess the ability to apply constructs and design tools and to manage the overall design/innovation process to design/redesign a new solutions/business models characterized by higher sustainability degrees. The project work accounts for 50% of the final grade. A bonus/malus on the evaluation of the team project will be assigned to each team member on the basis of extra-participation or free riding, evaluated by the faculty by taking into consideration the peer assessment and the participation during the reviews and final presentations.

 

Evaluation element

Points

Oral exam

50%

Innovation project

50%

Bonus/malus

+/- 2 points on the innovation project


NOT ATTENDING STUDENTS

For students who are not participating in the project work and/or are not participating in class, the evaluation will be based on a final written (instead of the project work) and oral exam. The exam probes the student’s understanding of the concepts inherent to sustainability-oriented innovation and design and the student’s ability to critically apply the main tools to specific cases that aim to change their solutions/business models toward a more sustainable approach.


Teaching materials


ATTENDING AND NOT ATTENDING STUDENTS

The materials of the course consist of:

Suggested reading:

  • Hahn, R. (2022). Sustainability management: Global perspectives on concepts, instruments, and stakeholders. Rüdiger Hahn.
  • Lüdeke-Freund, F., Breuer, H., & Massa, L. (2022). Sustainable Business Model Design—45 Patterns. Druck-und Verlagshaus Zarbock GmbH & Co. KG, Frankfurt am Main.
  • Ceschin, F., and Gaziulusoy, I. (2019). Design for sustainability: a multi-level framework from products to socio-technical systems. Routledge.

 [SB1]Do we have a collection of articles beyond the suggested readings?

 [MM2]probably not

Last change 02/03/2026 12:55