Business model innovation and transition to a sustainable food system: A case study in the Lisbon metropolitan area

The food systems’ transition towards a sustainable involves structural changes, namely the emphasis on local production, short supply chains, and the preference for organic products. The shift in the agri-food system is taking place through the creation of entirely new businesses and individual farms moving towards organic production. In both cases, the enterprises use a combination of well-established agricultural knowledge and techniques, new scientific knowledge on productive methods and new technological platforms for commercialization. These mixed sources permit the creation of innovative business models (BMs). They exemplify how traditional industries can absorb/generate innovation at technological and organizational levels, and become part of the new knowledge-based era. The study has three objectives: to analyse the emerging agri-food businesses in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA); to characterize innovative sustainable BMs within the transition dynamics; to reflect on the challenges that the characteristics of the food system pose for the emergence of these BMs. The study is part of an interdisciplinary project on Spatial Planning for Change (SPLACH). The analysis addresses the food system transition in a specific territory, namely the LMA. The paper presents results of the research conducted, focusing on the case of an organic food initiative, Quinta do Oeste.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Paths to Innovation in Supply Chains: The Landscape of Future Research

This chapter presents a Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda for supply chain and it is the result of an intensive work jointly performed involving a wide network of stakeholders from discrete manufacturing, process industry and logistics sector to put forward a vision to strengthen European Supply Chains for the next decade. The work is based on matching visions from literature and from experts with several iterations between desk research and workshops, focus groups and interviews. The result is a detailed analysis of the supply chain strategies identified as most relevant for the next years and definition of the related research and innovation topics as future developments and steps for the full implementation of the strategies, thus proposing innovative and cutting-edge actions to be implemented based on technological development and organisational change

Closed-Loop supply chains in circular economy business models

With the emergence of the circular economy (CE) approach into business models, there is need for deeper understanding of resource loops activities and how current supply chains can support the development of emerging CE business models. However, there is still limited research addressing the conceptualization of closed loops in the supply chain literature. This work addresses this research gap and proposes a typology for closed loops that is independent from the type of product under concern. Our findings suggest that there are two types of closed-loop supply chains in circular business models. Further work is envisaged to understand how companies can effectively develop their closed-loop supply chains as part of their transformation towards a more circular business model

A Toolkit for Designing Products and Services Fit for Circular Consumption

This paper introduces the Use2Use design toolkit – a set of tools that can be used to design for circular consumption. In contrast to other available circular design tools, the toolkit emphasises the importance of applying a user perspective when exploring opportunities for product circularity. It aids designers and other agents to explore user needs, identify consumption-related design challenges, and design products and services that can create enabling preconditions that make it possible, more convenient, and preferable for people to circulate products from use to use. The process to develop the tool is initially presented followed by a description of the toolkit and its five tools. The paper concludes with a discussion regarding how the proposed toolkit compares to other circular design tools and what implications it has for design practice and future research

A Toolkit for Designing Products and Services Fit for Circular Consumption

This paper introduces the Use2Use design toolkit—a set of tools that can be used to design for circular consumption. In contrast to other available circular design tools, the toolkit emphasises the importance of applying a user perspective when exploring opportunities for product circularity. It aids designers and other agents to explore user needs, identify consumption-related design challenges, and design products and services that can create enabling preconditions that make it possible, more convenient, and preferable for people to circulate products from use to use. The process to develop the tool is initially presented followed by a description of the toolkit and its five tools. The paper concludes with a discussion regarding how the proposed toolkit compares to other circular design tools and what implications it has for design practice and future research

Logistics in the Circular Economy: Challenges and Opportunities

Circular economy (CE) is a concept that has gained considerable attentionin recent years, particularly in the domain of Industrial Ecology. CE requiresproducts to be easily repaired, refurbished, remanufactured, and eventually recycled.The transition to a CE creates distinct material flows that have to be managed in an efficient and sustainable manner. Existing studies on CE tend to focus on product design, material use, and the market potential of CE products with little attention paid to the logistics challenges associated with such developments. From a logistics perspective, CE can be seen as the integrated management of forward and reverse flows of products in a supply chain. In the operations and supply chain management literature, a large body of knowledge on how to operationalize closed-loop supply chains (CLSCs) already exists and is a starting point for understanding logistics in the CE context. As with traditional forward supply chain network design, CLSC and CE supply chains also require decisions on the role of facilities, their location, their capacity allocation, and their demand and supply allocation. The CE concept does however introduce new challenges especially as circular business innovations converge to increased servitization and to more collaborative and open business models.The transition towards circular business models requires businesses to positionthemselves according to three key strategic decision-making problems, namely,(1) the extent to which the logistics network is centralized, (2) the extent to which the product is servitized, and (3) the extent to which logistics services are coordinated. This chapter presents a theoretical overview of the three trade-offs and what their potential implications are

Open Innovation Participants Profiling: An Archetypes Approach

Part 6: Users and Organizations ProfilingInternational audienceOrganizations adopting Open Innovation seem to express slightly specific behavioral patterns, attitudes and values, which are beneficial and that can be perceptible in their interactions with outsiders. It would be useful to find a way to identify these characteristics and to perceive them in potential participants for Open Innovation consortia. This research work explores the concept of archetypes to provide an abstract way to express how companies engaging in Open Innovation look like. The adopted method applies web mining and preliminary results are presented, which show the potential of the approach

Operationalizing Industry 4.0: Understanding Barriers of Industry 4.0 and Circular Economy

Part 2: Sustainability and Production ManagementInternational audienceThe manufacturing industry has to withstand an increasing competition requiring customization of products, shorter time to market and a transition towards more sustainable operations and products. There is a need for a transition to business models that incorporate sustainability while keeping business activities profitable. Leveraging the advantages of new technologies within the concept of Industry 4.0 is seen as an important factor to maintain competitiveness while responding to the sustainability challenge. Changing the way businesses operate is not easy as is evident from studies that have identified many barriers, including costs, lack of competence, loss of jobs, and process, product or production facilities not suitable for Industry 4.0. Due to these barriers, firms are slow to make a transition towards customized products, shorter lead times and more sustainable operations and products. The commitment for sustainability includes a shift towards Circular Economy (CE) that poses additional barriers like geographic dispersion, product complexity, and lock-in to the contemporary linear ‘take-make-consume-dispose’ model of operation. This paper addresses how manufacturers perceive Industry 4.0, what motivates their investments in Industry 4.0, and what barriers they see in adapting Industry 4.0 followed by a literature review identifying barriers for adhering to CE in the manufacturing industry sector. The study offers empirical insights identifying a need for a roadmap for implementation of Industry 4.0 to support CE as well as providing directions for future research