The Opportunities and Challenges of Persuasive Technology in Creating Sustainable Innovation and Business Model Innovation Annabeth Aagaard • Peter Lindgren Published online: 10 March 2015 Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015 Abstract The opportunities of persuasive technology in facilitating sustainable innova- tion and business model innovation have been witnessed continuously during the last decade. The unique ability of persuasive technology in interacting and mediating across users, customers, decisions makers and other stakeholders provides access to core knowledge about behavior and opportunities to influence and even change their behavior in a positive and more sustainable manner. Sustainable innovation and business model in- novation is gaining more and more competitive leverage due to customer requirements, the growing strength of NGO’s and the increasing sustainable agenda of global businesses. However, getting knowledge of the stakeholders and their behavior as well as the potentials in actively supporting more sustainable behaviors provides totally new and unique op- portunities for radical and customer-focused sustainable innovation and business model innovation, which is explored through a theoretical review and case examples in the present study. The findings reveal a number of key opportunities to pursue and a number of critical challenges to adjust to as presented in propositions. Keywords Persuasive technology Á Sustainable innovation Á Business model innovation 1 Introduction Persuasive technology is designed with the intent to change a particular aspect of human behavior in a predefined way [20]. Several authors stress that persuasive technology is one of the most effective tools to help change others’ attitudes or behaviors [15, 18, 26, 34, 35, 56]. A. Aagaard University of Southern Denmark, Slagelse, Denmark e-mail: aaa@sdu.dk P. Lindgren (&) Aarhus University, Herning AU, Aarhus, Denmark e-mail: peterli@auhe.au.dk 123 Wireless Pers Commun (2015) 81:1511–1529 DOI 10.1007/s11277-015-2484-1