Openness as a supportive paradigm for eco-efficient Product-Service Systems

Product-Service System (PSS) is a concept which can be exploited to increase the eco-efficiency of value creation. It does not focus only on physical products but also on common access to their functionality, thus allowing mutualizing of products between manufacturers and users. However, reaching PSS eco-efficiency requires facing the challenge of an intensive information exchange between them. Especially in the case of business-to-consumer offers, stakeholders are an anonymous crowd of users, of which product usage information is hard to be obtained. This paper explores the potential of the Open Design concept - the opening of the development process and its documents - in order to address this problem. By promoting user involvement, Open Design might bridge the gap between use-related information and the design process – thus supporting eco-efficient PSS design. This general idea will be illustrated by the examples of PSS taken from both business-to-business and business-to-consumer domains.