Bruna Andrade, Aguinaldo dos Santos, and Ana Cristina Broega
This PhD research aims to develop and validate a reference model to support Innovation Facilitators in amplifying sustainable distributed footwear systems. The footwear industry faces challenges related to centralised global supply chains, intensive resource use, fragmented production networks, and limited integration with local contexts. Although sustainability-oriented innovations are increasingly emerging, their dissemination and long-term consolidation remain constrained by the complexity of coordinating actors, resources, knowledge, and processes. The study adopts Design Science Research and is organised into four phases: understanding, development, evaluation, and reflection. Methods include literature review, desk research, ex post facto case studies, semi-structured interviews, workshops, direct observation, and iterative model evaluation. The Sandália Matariz pilot, developed with a socio-environmental organisation and a Caiçara creative community in Rio de Janeiro—Brazil, explored knowledge transfer, local adaptation, and productive autonomy. Preliminary findings indicate that amplification depends not only on technologies or production models, but also on knowledge exchange, capacity building, multi-actor collaboration, systemic coordination, local embeddedness, and mechanisms for replication and adaptation. These findings are being translated into amplification heuristics and requirements for the reference model, which is now progressing towards iterative development and empirical evaluation.
Keywords: amplification processes, systemic design, distributed systems, footwear, value chain.