Decisions made in early phases of the product innovation process heavily influence the sustainability performance of a product. This study presents a literature review of approaches for assessing product sustainability performance in early phases and identifies and analyses six main challenges and opportunities from a strategic sustainability perspective: (i) finding the right combination between qualitative and quantitative approaches; (ii) avoiding reductionism; (iii) managing trade-offs; (iv) conceptualizing and defining sustainability; (v) thinking strategically; and (vi) considering both negative and positive impacts. The review also found that the terms assess, evaluate, and measure are all used in relation to sustainability performance. Based on an analysis of semantics and etymology, the study describes differences between the terms and how they should be used, arguing that assess and evaluate are more suitable when describing sustainability performance, while measure can be used in relation to indicators that can form part of an assessment or evaluation.

In the EU, initiatives with concrete instruments for measuring and storing sustainability-related product data are now introduced in legislation. Based on literature review and semi-structured interviews, this study investigates two EU instruments, the Product Environmental Footprint method and Digital Product Passports, and their potential implications for company capabilities to design and select more sustainable solutions in a strategic way. The results show that these instruments can lead to increased transparency and traceability in the design and comparison of solutions, allowing for more effective collaboration across the value chain. By applying a strategic sustainability perspective, it was found that these EU instruments have major limitations as they lack a systems perspective, do not include a full socio-ecological sustainability perspective, and do not support strategic decision-making. This results in risks for suboptimization and the design of solutions that turn out to be costly dead-ends on the way towards a sustainable society. Research is therefore recommended to investigate how these instruments can facilitate a strategic development of sustainable solutions. © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press.