Envisioning the Future of Home

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) has developed a comprehensive research report that envisions the future of home. The research explores the pressures, trends and influences determining how people are experiencing their homes today and what they need and want their homes to do and be for them. It forms the basis for a Future of Home “Lighthouse”, a simple, shared, inspiring vision of a future of home that is part of a happier, healthier (and more sustainable) lifestyle. The Lighthouse highlights people’s needs and wants from their lifestyles (today, tomorrow, in five years, in 15 years), and identifies spaces in which innovation needs to occur to be able to deliver this vision. It is designed to help companies uncover new opportunities to play a role in offering their customers healthier, more appealing and sustainable homes to live in. Companies can enormously influence the impacts that occur in our homes. Of course, there are behaviors that we can change ourselves. But it is companies that work with city planners and policy-makers to determine the energy, water and waste infrastructure that is installed. Developers define the efficiency of the building envelope and the size of individual units. Consumer goods companies decide on the products and services that we should fill our homes with. The home is an area where companies can truly shape the future for the better. This Future of Home Lighthouse will drive rich conversations among companies’ R&D, Innovation, Insights, Marketing, Brand Strategy and Public Affairs functions, galvanizing their different focus points around a positive customer perspective and language. Drawn from a broad array of open and accessible sources, it offers reliable current “best possible” truth and can help to validate existing thinking, highlight areas that are not being explored and reveal critical components of a challenge. It always aims to help uncover what we can do, rather than what we cannot do, if we are to lead more sustainable lifestyles in the future. The Lighthouse is part of WBCSD’s work in the area of Sustainable Lifestyles, which seeks to understand the world that we need to create — technically, practically and emotionally — to enable and inspire more sustainable lifestyles.