Why focus on everyday activities?

Envisioning and changing everyday activities, such as cooking, commuting, bathing, and socializing, are key to meeting the modern challenges of society and business. These activities are the bulk of human activity for the majority of the population and are responsible for a large proportion of natural resource consumption and pollution on a global scale. It follows that the accumulated impact of people’s everyday activities is all-important for environmental sustainability. Everyday activities also have fundamental impact on people’s perceived quality of life, by either empowering or impeding ways of living and social relations. For businesses, an understanding of everyday activities is important, because they shape markets and offer insight into how to offer valuable products, services, or experiences which create a unique relationship with the customer.

It follows, that ambitions to provide new levels of value, i.e. radical innovation, can be achieved either by supporting existing everyday activities or enabling fundamentally new activities. An understanding of change and continuity in the everyday is therefore a prerequisite for exploring highly relevant and valuable innovation opportunities in a modern society.