With this innovative, affordable electric car, Nissan is bringing a sustainable mobility system breakthrough to our industry and to people all over the world". said Carlos Ghosn, President and CEO, Nissan Motor Co. Ltd.
The MLP can then theoretically be extended not only to describe the social aspects that support or hinder the breakthrough of (sustainable) technologies but also of social innovations.
The concept of "Physical Internet" [34], as a metaphor of the Digital Internet, has been recently introduced "to propose a vision for a sustainable and progressively deployable breakthrough solution to global problems associated with the way we move, handle, store, realise, supply and use physical objects all around the world" (from the Physical Internet Manifesto [35]).
This rapid growth is being fuelled by significant investment in research and development and breakthroughs in sustainable technologies, as indicated by a spike in patent applications.
For example, in India (my country), breakthroughs in sustainable agricultural practices as a result of research in partner countries has been beneficial for small farmers and workers.
Others say genetic engineering should be considered where breakthrough gains for sustainable farming might be achieved, such as inventing a perennial form of wheat that could be mowed rather than harvested and replanted each year.
William McDonough, who began his career as an architect, is now also a global sustainable design adviser who develops breakthrough toxin- and carcinogen-free textiles and is consulting with Chinese officials on urban design and new sustainable housing for 400 million people over the next 10 years.
But "sustainable" never brings the big breakthrough.
The advent of bio-based benzoxazine in the field of polybenzoxazines is a major breakthrough towards their sustainable development.
Two years ago, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies launched a study to identify the 50 most important technology breakthroughs required for sustainable global development so that all of us who work in the technology-for-development space can put our collective efforts towards them.
