The objectives of the project are to develop, test, evaluate and establish a set of tools for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the bricks-and-mortar retail sector that provides needs-based guidance for the planning and implementation of sustainability-orientated innovation projects and effectively promotes the innovation skills of managers and vocational training staff (known as the INE toolbox). Together with twelve training retail companies from the Weser-Ems and Elbe-Weser regions, this toolbox will be iteratively developed and trialled using the design-based research approach. To this end, innovation teams with managers and vocational training staff will be formed in the participating SMEs to plan and implement innovation projects in (at least) one of the five sustainability-oriented fields of action in the retail sector (energy and resources, logistics and transport, product range design and customer advice, personnel and training, and social commitment). Four companies will be combined into a cohort so that three test loops can be realised and evaluated using quantitative (multiple-choice tests, questionnaires) and qualitative (interviews, flashlights, group discussions) methods.

The instruments and the INE toolbox guide the innovation process by providing a structure for the management of innovation: From problem definition, idea generation and idea evaluation through to idea realisation, the innovation teams are supported by individual work and learning tasks as well as cooperative methods. Apprentices can also actively participate in the innovation process via the vocational training staff.

The tools are used to simultaneously promote the subject and personnel skills of the innovation teams in terms of sustainability-oriented innovation expertise. To this end, specialist knowledge in the field of sustainability is promoted in a targeted manner via the work and learning tasks. Personal competence can be modelled via individual sustainability-oriented epistemic convictions. These subjective ideas are collected in the project and developed in the direction of differentiated convictions through co-operation and the epistemic messages in the work and learning tasks.