Extending the lifetime of the product, as one of the strategies for design for sustainability, may increase the value of the product in use, repair, recycle and disposal phases for a longer lifetime thereby decreasing demand for new manufacturing. However, employing these perspectives may be challenging and requires long development processes. In the current structure, small scale companies have a potential to be a significant actor in transition for sustainable manufacturing and design due to their agile development skills. We will present empirical data collected from eight participants regarding five small scale companies who design and manufacture long-lasting connected smart speakers. Key findings and implications highlight that small scale smart product producers strive to maintain control over design decisions in order to enhance the potential for long-lasting products; such companies thus need to be empowered towards distribution and decentralisation of design and manufacturing. To do so, (1) local manufacturing of the hardware is needed; (2) distributed and decentralised repair services need to be available to distribute the responsibility and increase the resilience of the product; (3) new types of intermediary relationships such as collaborating with local incubation centres and local initiatives should be encouraged; and (4) future designers may also need to practise their production skills and include open-source hardware and software development in their projects.

We recognise that the dominant socio-economic development models in industrialised contexts are unsustainable. The pressure of human beings on the environment has profoundly modified natural systems, and today the planet is reaching its limits in the capacity of assimilating environmental effects caused by anthropic activities. In the last few decades the reaction of humankind to sustainability problems has produced a series of approaches that has gone from relying upon end-of-pipe solutions to cleaner production and product eco-design strategies. However, although these types of interventions are fundamental and necessary, the improvements they can provide are usually more than offset by the pace and scale of population growth and increasing consumption levels. For these reasons it is clear that we must not only address products, production processes and provision of services but we must also address the patterns of consumption, lifestyles, and the institutions that underpin them and how all of these must be addressed simultaneously, if we intend to make the transformation to sustainable societal processes. [...]