As the world population and economies grow, resources for production and consumption are in rising demand. Projections of current global trends display a raise in consumption of raw materials by 50% until 2050 (for most parts in developed countries) ([1], p. 26). Other estimates predict a two- to threefold increase of extraction of raw materials, if western consumption patterns are adopted worldwide ([2], p. 71). In economic terms, projections show that by 2030 the world gross domestic product (GDP) will have grown by 130%. This growth will indeed use more resources, driving raw material extraction to double within 20 years ([1], p. 1). The production and consumption system of the industrialized world is about to hit the ceiling of finite resources with detrimental effects for the market and world economies (e.g., [3,4]). The use of resources is not only worrisome due to their depletion and scarcity but also due to the degradation caused to the environment. The biological cycles in eco-systems are altered and affected by the material flows of the world economy. Every input into these material flows eventually becomes an output in form of waste or emissions. By dematerializing input processes, the overall environmental burden can be more effectively reduced compared to measures on the output side (filtering emissions, reducing toxic substances etc.) [5].

In principle, the need for dematerialization results from the perception of a limited available “environmental space” [6] on our “spaceship earth” [7]. Environmental space is the amount of resources we can use without comprising future generations’ access. By now, western lifestyles generate wealth for less than 20% of the world population, but consume 80% of all resources globally. Therefore, ways to generate wealth with 10% of resources (or by a factor of 10 less) need to be invented in order to let the people who use less, claim their fair share of resources [8]. This is why the concept of “environmental space” claims a reduction of resource use in high intensity areas of the industrialized world.

Empirically this is possible, as a comparison between households in Finland has shown. According to the concept of factor 10, there is a need to create a sustainable way of living, a sustainable consumption of household goods, food and beverages, everyday mobility and tourism, electricity, heating and housing that does not exceed 8 tons per capita of resource use by 2050. The difference between the highest and lowest backpacks is more than tenfold, households with similar income and education level show a fourfold difference [9]. For instance, modern western lifestyles in Germany or the US carry all in all 70–90 tons per capita and year ([2], p. 61).

This article addresses the never-ending story of why people want to accumulate, i.e., to grow materially. Therefore, this article reconsiders growth on a micro level. This means that the paradigm of growth is downscaled onto the level of consumers and products as well as producers. What are sustainable products or services supposed to look like? And how is their design and production linked to an appropriate social perception of growth? Therefore, we introduce strategies that try to cope with sustainable development, namely efficiency, consistency and sufficiency. In the following, we will not refer to sustainability from a triple bottom line, but introduce a cultural sphere which is derived from Scerri and James and implemented in Circles for Sustainability on the community level [10].

We do not strive to recapitulate the debate on post-growth as a whole, which addresses merely topics from a macroeconomic perspective, but give references when required [11]. This enables us to focus on a micro perspective on sustainability by introducing socio-cultural aspects of identity, engagement or well-being.

Therefore, we look at growth from a constructivist perspective recognizing desires, values, norms and social practices as a starting point for societal, followed by an economic transformation towards sustainability.

The task is to translate and synthesize strategies and growth paradigms on a micro level. As Schroeder points out, research on sustainability is missing the dynamic links between micro level changes, macro level affections and vice versa [12]. We conclude by giving advice to focus the growth debate and sustainable strategies on individuals in order to enable them to implement transitional ideas into their everyday life via a new understanding and design of goods for the sake of well-being.

The strategy of dematerialization compliments a paradigm shift in the long run and has thus been propagated since the 1990s [13]. Technological innovations tend to make product life cycles shorter. At the same time, production processes remain wasteful in terms of resource efficiency. Today, less than 10% of raw material extracted for making an industrial product appears in the finished product. The Material Footprint [14] of every kilogram of industrial product is approximately thirty kilograms ([5], p. 13ff).

Humans tend to approach environmental problems caused by drastic material flow with short term, localized measures that solve problems “end of pipe” instead of addressing the source. Eventually, the world prosperity benefits and increases in terms of world gross national product. And still, environmental production costs are treated as externalities by economic logic (e.g., [3,15]). The world’s growing prosperity in terms of income is vastly based on exploitation of natural resources [16,17].

In the following, we develop an integration of sustainability strategies referring to the growth paradigm. With presenting logics of efficiency, consistency and sufficiency, we do not seek to separate them conceptually, but carve out limitations of efficiency and consistency as well as linkages and alignments between them. Doing so, we strive to synthesize strategies for products and services from macroeconomic to micro level within sufficiency.

A historical insight suggests that 99% of human history is a non-growing history [38]. Economic growth between 1995 and 1998 was stronger than the total growth 10,000 years before 1900 [39].

At the same time, one has to face the fact that materialist attitudes have prevailed in the last decades. In Figure 1, we see interpolated trends of various observations between 1981 to 2008 from integrated waves from the World Value Survey [40]. The four-item post-materialist index tries to roughly display value changes. Here, materialists are coded by one; a mixed type, which is likely to switch between materialist and post-materialist attitudes, is coded by two and post-materialists are coded by three. The mean of the observed years roughly shows that materialists and mixed types prevail across cultures within a selection from the G20 over the last two to three decades. So far, one may observe shifts in favor of post-materialist values in younger cohorts, but no majority occupies post-materialist values ([41], Figure 1). In terms of qualitative values, a post-materialist movement administers its niche. No fundamental change or “silent revolution” is observed in the distribution of post-materialist preferences since Inglehart [42] (on the contrary, see Figure 1). Once established, a shift and the institutionalization of new paradigms is hardly predictable within generations [43]. Moreover, it is not clear how far macroeconomic growth increases [44] or decreases [45] the likelihood to switch to post-materialist values. Due to the fact that changes on the macro level cannot fully explain the dynamics in the institutionalization of paradigm shifts, we are going to update and concentrate on neglected social considerations of growth on the micro level.

We start by giving an explanation why materialist growth prevails on the micro level, and make a link to the last paragraph by giving arguments on how to foster sustainable growth on the micro level of product service-arrangements.

The social construction of growth may be empirically observed by the hypothesis of relative utility. Hirsch [46] already described these linkages in his “Social limits to growth”. Principally, there are two social components that limit growth socially. At a certain point, the relative utility decreases with increasing wealth. This was already described by Simmel [47] as a trickle down effect. Symbolically, the position in society decreases with the increasing distribution of goods. The worth of social distinction devalues. Second, in absolute terms, utility decreases directly with distribution of goods, when for instance too many cars cause traffic jams or higher education tightens competition on labor markets. On the one hand, utility diminishes socially or positionally, on the other hand, it is a problem of sums that comes with increasing distribution and wealth.

In consequence, there is not more equality on markets, but increased competition that asks for more efforts to sustain social distinctions. The net total of losers and winners remains the same. In economic terms, there is no optimal equilibrium but decreasing satisfaction when wealth increases in rich societies.

More recent evidence has introduced the relative income hypothesis that shows that people prefer a relative increase in income to absolute increases (e.g., [48]). For example, people would prefer a 5% increase in income when all others´ income decreases by 10%, to an increase of everybody’s income by 10%. This effect is called Joneses effect since it is about keeping up with your neighbors.

Having as much or more than others becomes more important than having in absolute terms. Kahneman and Deaton [49] show that money cannot buy happiness. Well-being increases with income up to a certain threshold (75,000 US-Dollar per capita and year), above which no further progress is observed.

The social logic in growth is driven by social distinction. Psychologically, it is consumerism that extends ourselves by our relationships to cars, clothes and respective collections. Put negatively, it is a fear of an empty self that leads us to the consumption of novelty as Veblen [50] first pointed out as conspicuous consumption [51]. This leads to social distinction in the sense of Simmel or Bourdieu. The premium of novelty is reserved to the wealthy until it trickles down through the social stratum. These social dynamics represent—as Jackson puts it—“the iron cage of consumerism” ([16], p. 102) that drives growth culturally.

A quantitative or material growth perception remains not only for methodological reasons (for the sake of clear measurement and comparison) but also for reasons of determined perceptions of growth in people’s consciousness. Non-goal orientated growth institutionalized and stabilized historically.

Keynes noted:

“When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. [...] All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard”.

As soon as enough means are allocated, concentration may be pointed towards goals. The ultimate paradigm of the contemporary growth paradigm still is the optimal allocation of means. Growth in numbers (in other words GDP) suggests a perception of growth as uni-dimensional; overall it is about money.

A multidimensional concept, such as the one suggested by Stiglitz et al. [27], opens possibilities to perceive growth differentiated on the micro level. A determining definition is abandoned in favor of a diverse universe of definitions by individual utility functions. As long as strategies and sets of indicators do not entail a positive experience by its addressors, a top-down regulatory intervention in favor of a sustainable development will not become successful. On the contrary, social conflict is likely [12].

Limits to growth of contemporary societies may not exclusively be defined in natural terms, but more than ever by diminishing returns to individual welfare by material growth. The relative notion of social considerations on growth suggest a race to the top, a leveling that does not promise gains in welfare, but an ever-increasing social pressure to keep up and guarantee social inclusion by accumulating material means.

The struggle for distinction is led by exclusivity, which is achieved by accumulating and investing capital. Forms of capital encompass economic capital, as well as social and cultural capital according to the classic categories suggested by Bourdieu [53]. The struggle for its symbolic valuation in society is fought by groups and milieus, which try to support the certain form of capital they rely on. A shift towards a common sense of symbolic capital in favor of less economically driven and materialized accumulations of wealth, is then in need of powerful changing agents. Up to now, the powerful stratum relies on the economic capital from which it obtains a social distinction. This paper argues for a different conception of distinction in which a sustainable accumulation of capital and wealth is symbolically preferred.

Social considerations on growth open windows of opportunity to reconsider growth paradigms socially. Social learning has to reflect social limits to growth in order to set free new options and possibilities for welfare that escape socially driven constraints to grow materially, which threatens social coherence in the long run.

On the one hand, material growth is bound to social limits that reveal ceilings to material growth for individuals. From a social scientist’s point of view, there is no point in infinite economic growth in absolute terms. On the other hand, its constructivist notion offers pathways to maintain social distinction and growth in sustainable ways. Social dynamics and social change inherit the potential for social innovations. In this sense, we refer to the institutionalizing dynamics or duality of structure and social practice introduced by Giddens [54,55].

To conclude, sustainable production and consumption need to cope with threats to social coherence and focus more on social innovation and sufficiency in order to deal with rebound effects. A downshift in working time for instance does not have to lead to social conflict due to less purchasing power, but maintain individual welfare by enabling social engagement and participation as well as maintaining social distinction. We argue that it is not about the products to address, but about shifting attention to arrangements, which address aspects of engagement or meaning [56] which enable resource efficient production and social consumption systems while ‘growing’ individually.

The questions arise, who is capable of introducing opportunities, which support sustainable growth individually, and what these social innovations may look like. This is a promising focus on the beginning of production and consumption, the beginning of value chains and the lever of added value. Therefore, we concentrate on new sustainable designs and analyze eco-intelligent product service-systems regarding how far they meet definitions of sustainable growth.

It is to be remembered that sustainable production and consumption suits individual environmental space, which suggests roughly a dematerialization by factor 10 in industrialized countries. Variance in resource consumption by private households shows according potentials when addressing consumption patterns properly [57]. This is our ecological baseline throughout the article.

According to Schmidt-Bleek ([8], p. 4), eco-intelligent goods are objects, devices, machines, buildings and infrastructures that provide as many benefits as possible (differing, measured according to the needs of the individual) at competitive prices. Moreover, a minimization of materials, energy, land use, waste, transport, packaging and dangerous materials along the whole lifecycle, from the excavation of the raw materials to the recycling process, takes place.

This refers to the concepts of sustainable design or eco-design [58,59,60], but enhances concepts by referring to microeconomic and sociological considerations above those that are able to bridge the gap between macro strategies on sustainability and micro implementation in everyday life. We then open up for eco-innovation, which basically means the creation of novel and competitively priced goods, processes, systems, services, and procedures that can satisfy human needs and bring quality of life to all people with a lifecycle-wide minimal use of natural resources and a minimal release of toxic substances [61].

A good is usually differentiated by products and services, whereas every product provides a service unit. We switch views from the product (e.g., a cup of coffee) to services (e.g., providing tasty coffee). The bundle of service defines the utility expected by the user of the product [13].

Thinking in terms of using not owning, thinking about clean laundry rather than about the washing machine leads to creative and innovative product service-systems. Furthermore, the aim is to create system-wide low resource product service-systems with a higher service delivery while maintaining the quality or even improving it [5]. In this case, product service-arrangements play a crucial role for creating pathways towards “design for change” [56].

The next step is about rearranging product service-systems that try to implement a new connotation of growth on the micro level as defined above. Only when abstract sustainability strategies are positively experienced, is a shift towards sustainable lifestyles possible. The aspect of market demand is a key challenge, since without the acceptance of the consumer, even the most sustainable product will fail [62]. Our concept of sustainable growth integrates the challenges of weighing between individual and social welfare while saving the services of nature, instantly shifting the weight of analysis onto the micro level. This is what is meant by eco-intelligence.

The following table introduces some important, but certainly not all, aspects of eco-intelligent product service-arrangements, which relieve the production and consumption system from ecological pressure.

We set our indicators within the universe of Armatya Sen’s capability approach [63]. Here, it is about functionings, which determine what individuals are capable of. Functionings may reach from elementary things like being healthy to more socially complex functionings like feeling safe or participating in social life. We do not concentrate on basic needs, but on social indicators that seem more adequate to measure welfare than the uni-dimensional measure of economic utility.

The indicators (see Table 1) are in loose and latent hierarchical order from social to individual. Whereas categories of resilience, innovation and rebound encompass societal welfare, downshifting, participation, identity and security highlight individual welfare. The latter were recently introduced by Hassenzahl and Diefenbacher in the context of well-being and “experience design” [64].

The concepts below analyze to which extent these arrangements fit introduced concepts of eco-intelligent products or services and sustainable growth by considering their terms and definitions above. We choose well-known and intuitively approachable business cases. The first introduces a concept for a fashion service-system (tailoring), the second elaborates a personal mobility service-system (carpooling). The concepts were designed alternatively in favor of sustainable product service-systems. Eventually, the analysis helps to illustrate our theoretical considerations above and stimulates the elaboration of sustainable design concepts.

The presented concepts are adapted from the Sustainable Summer Schools (SSS). The SSS is an innovation campus consisting of workshops in which students, teachers, companies, and experts in the field develop sustainable and resource efficient product service-systems in an interdisciplinary and, if possible, transdisciplinary fashion [65].

The concepts are developed according to the Design Guide [66] that provides background information, an assessment catalogue and a toolset for the integration of sustainability aspects into the design process. The presented methodology is derived from the concept of material input per service unit (MIPS) [31] and the Hot Spot Analysis [67].

This paper showed that growth might be revised on the micro level rather than focusing exclusively on considerations on the macro level. Within the concepts of mainstream sustainability strategies, an adequate reflection of limits to growth needs to consider limits to sustainability strategies as well. It was concluded that strategies should not be conceptualized separately but integratively. Moreover, with respect to that, a macro-micro link is missing when discussing the implementation potential of strategies. Mainstream strategies of efficiency and consistency have to be integrated within sufficiency in order to set up a sufficient approach to sustainability [25,71]. Sufficiency is able to link macro sustainability strategies and social and individual welfare, respectively.

In order to specify, growth was reconsidered within the sociological argumentation. The goal was to revise individual welfare within environmental space. Social limits to growth have been updated by new insights regarding values, diminishing marginal utility or symbolic social distinction. Growth is highly determined by institutionalized perceptions and social status rather than by absolute, uni-dimensional indications. Limits to growth need to be perceived in a way that social innovations pave new opportunities to grow qualitatively without depending on materialization. Sustainable growth on the micro level was defined as a concept that fosters individual welfare by enhancing social enactment within the boundaries of individual environmental space.

In this sense we refer to eco-intelligent product service-arrangements in the context of sustainable production and consumption. A systemic view on production and consumption allows for concepts of sustainable design, which concentrates on service units rather than products. It is about mobility rather than cars. In order to translate definitions of sustainable growth within eco-intelligent product service-arrangements, we offer latent indications on the social and individual level to which design concepts may refer. Then, a sustainable design fits the notion of limited environmental space while addressing social and individual welfare. Social and individual welfare benefit from products or service systems that incorporate preferences for social downshift, sufficiency, equity, the participation, distinction or competence of the people.

Further research needs to address behavior and habits in order to successfully intervene in the socially driven materialized race to the top. Experimental research design and Co-Creation processes need to be elaborated (see [57]). It is about new user integrated production and consumption or the design of social innovations that foster and exploit the dynamics of social distinction. Eco-intelligent solutions for service systems are needed that reconsider natural and social limits to growth in order to foster a new understanding of ecologically and individually reconcilable growth paradigms.