Frugal Innovation and Innovative Creation

1Natural Environment, Positive Private Goods and Consequentism

Corporate social responsibility (private or public), or CSER (Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility) of sustainable development (SD) – based on its three pillars (economic, social, environmental) – implies taking responsibility for decisions made. Taking responsibility for a decision opens up several possibilities for action, but the most widely used way of impacting the NE to date (hypothetically) consists of repairing ex post any harm or damage. This ex post approach is problematic in that it tries to ameliorate, while underestimating, the impact on NE. By focusing on private enterprise, our main objective is to show that an innovative private good could free itself from negative externalities detrimental to NE, not by repairing or compensating ex post, but by anticipating ex ante. In order to establish our point, let us recall the basic definitions of economic goods by getting to the heart of the matter.

Samuelson (1954) contrasts public good with private good. In this case, the private good is perfectly circumscribed by the double criterion of exclusivity¹ and rivalry². However, public good is a much fuzzier term and is also a poor translation.

Translating public good to collective good (public good is not a term that can be reserved only for goods initiated and/or managed directly by the public authorities) seems more correct, but introduces a new potential bias unless we distinguish collective ...