The Role Of Technological Innovation In Sustainability – A Case Study Of Formula One Car

1.Research context

In the last decade, the number of research studies and discussions on environmental changes and problems has increased due to the enhanced level of technological advancements.  It is important to understand the dynamics of technological change due to two reasons. Firstly, the social and economic activities can have a negative impact on environment with the increasing rate of technological change. when new technologies are being introduced, they have potential to facilitate the increased pollution or to mitigate the polluting activities. Secondly, the impact of many technologies is quite large as they result in the environmental changes which are evaluated over time horizons of centuries or decades (Carayannis, Sindakis and Walter, 2015). Certainly, as also told by Turnheim et al., (2015), this uncertainty about the future rate and direction of technological change is foundation for forecasting the environmental problems which are associated with the technological change. This demonstrates that when new technologies are being introduced, they have the potential to result in many environmental problems for the universe. These problems need to be addressed by the innovators who introduce the certain technology.

The automobile industry is one of the most popular industries which introduce the technology which has the implications for the environment (both positive and negative). There have been introducing many strategies and technologies since years for reducing the issues like carbon print. However, there are many automobiles which are still notorious for being one of the core reasons of the sustainability problems. In the sports car industry, the issue of sustainability is more glaring. There exists mixed concerns of the researchers about how the sports car industry is managing the sustainability. According to Tigabu, Berkhout and van Beukering (2015) and Dechezleprêtre, Neumayer and Perkins (2015) when sports cars are produced there are giant footprints that exist as a result of their production process. Like other automobiles, materials like galls, rubber, steel, paints and many more are used in its production. When the life of these card ends, they still leave the environmental impact like toxic battery acids, plastics etc. Likewise, another issue is related to the fuel costs which is associated with the petroleum products which further enhances the environmental concerns. The extraction of energy from earth can damage the local ecosystem and a lot of energy is used (Liu, Liu and Chen, 2015). Similarly, the issue of air quality is also significant. When these sports cars are on track, they leave the smog, carbon monoxide and other toxins. This demonstrates that many environmental related issues are specific to the sports cars. As they are based on high technology, it is important to analyse how technology could be used to have the lowest possible environmental adversaries (Bauer et al., 2015). The present research will be conducted with the intention to study how the technological advancements and innovation could be used to deal with the issue of sustainability, with particular focus on environment protection. As there are many types of automobiles and there is a long list of sports cars and it is not possible to examine all of them in detail, therefore, this research specifically focuses on one sports car named Formula One. Formula One is a single seat, open wheel and open cockpit racing car which has rear and front wings. The placement of engine is behind the driver. This car is used in the competitions of car racing which are organised by Formula One racing events. It is based on some unique regulations. One of the regulations state that cars must has to be constructed by racing teams themselves where they can only outsource the manufacture and design (Limebeer and Perantoni, 2015).

The rationale for studying the role of technological innovation in sustainability with reference to Formula One car is that it is heavily associated with the greenness in the public consciousness. states that Formula One is one of those sports cars that is known as the most environmental friendly innovation (Sylt, 2105). The success of this technological innovation does not only ensures the efficiency but it also ensures the sustainability and this has allowed this car to gain a competitive advantage. It is currently working on the philosophy of creating and developing technology using the fewer resources and having improved performance (Morris, 2012). Though, there also exists few critics who have also highlighted the negative impact of technology used by the Formula One on the environment. The criticism makes it more interesting to study how the technological advancement used by Formula One have implications for sustainability.

Research aim and objectives

The aim of present research will be to examine