The course is designed to provide organizations with leadership knowledge and skills to promote social sustainability through product and service offerings, including physical products, digital products, services, and any combination thereof. It supports the transition toward sustainability by emphasizing the social dimension, improving knowledge and skills, and systematically and strategically integrating social sustainability aspects into product and service development to create more optimized, whole-system solutions.

Key Takeaways

The course provided valuable insights into frameworks and metrics for social sustainability, as well as the complexities within this area. The education was heavily based on current research, including both achievements and challenges in the field. I engaged critically with the lecturers, questioning some of their conclusions regarding industrial relevance and readiness.

• Understanding society’s social sustainability challenges and their underlying causes.
• Understanding the connection between products/product-service systems and these challenges, and the role product and service development can play in addressing them.
• Describing current efforts to integrate social sustainability aspects into product and service development.
• Understanding design intervention strategies and social values related to social sustainability.
• Recognizing the challenges in implementing a social sustainability strategy.
• Performing a social sustainability analysis on a product area.

Several business opportunities arise in applying AI to process the vast amounts of social sustainability information available for the IBM SCIS product line, particularly in supply chain capabilities. However, the conclusion after completing the course is that the current state of science, research, and regulatory frameworks is not yet mature enough for industrial application at an enterprise scale, making investments in this area unjustified. Additionally, the lecture team demonstrated a strong vocal hesitation toward AI, which introduced bias into discussions on social sustainability outcomes.