Encounters in Sustainable New Product Design and Development by Zimbabwean Design, Technology, And Engineering University Students

The drive of this paper is to explore the obstacles faced in new innovative product development design by Zimbabwean university learners in a bid to attain the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 “Responsible production and consumption†and the education 5.0 pillar “Innovation†. However, there is little progress toward the attainment of these related goals by students in the Zimbabwean university landscape and is fuelled by a lack of guidance and assistance from various stakeholders in the accomplishment of this objective. The study mainly concentrated on the encounters faced by university learners’ prior development of products that solve better the existing and emerging societal problems and at the same time fulfilling the UN sustainable development goal (SDG 12) “Responsible consumption and production†and Education 5.0 pillar “Innovation†. Open-ended questionnaire was used in this study to solicit in-depth data on the challenges university students encounter in new product development. Findings from the study indicated that Zimbabwean university learners are constrained by multiple challenges emanating from lack of monetary support from the Ministry of Higher and Tertiary Education, Innovation, Science and Technology (MHTEIST) and at the micro level either institutional level or agential conditions surrounding learning in the various universities of the country. These challenges include a shortage of resources, poor infrastructure, high student-lecturer ratios, lack of in-service training and staff development programs for lectures, and ineffective curriculum implementation among others