Electronic business (e-business) describes various forms of business transactions via electronic communication networks and at the time revolutionised the way in which companies and people traded with and among each other and organised value creation.

Against this background, the project assessed the potential opportunities of e-business for sustainable product utilisation. In addition to the broad-based assessment of the potential opportunities of e-business, the project focussed on the area of mobile multimedia services as a particularly fast-growing application area of mobile e-business (m-business). In contrast to other fields of application, m-business was only just emerging and had hardly been investigated and tested. Mobile devices and Internet access also promised additional potential opportunities for sustainable product utilisation systems.
The project pursued four central objectives:

  • An assessment of the potential opportunities of e-business and mobile multimedia services for sustainable product utilisation
  • Strategic corporate and innovation management: the systematic inclusion of sustainability requirements in the development of mobile multimedia services
  • The development of theoretical foundations for analysing and shaping the relationship between e-business and sustainability
  • Promoting the sustainability of product utilisation systems in the digital economy