Design thinking to enhance the sustainable business modelling process – A workshop based on a value mapping process

Sustainable business model innovation is an emerging topic, but only few tools are currently available to assist companies in sustainable business modelling. This paper works towards closing this gap by bringing together ‘design thinking’ and ‘sustainable business model innovation’ to refine the creative process of developing sustainable value propositions and improve the overall business modelling process. This paper proposes a new workshop framework based on a value mapping process, which was developed by literature synthesis, expert interviews, and multiple workshops. The framework was transferred into a workshop routine and subsequently tested with companies and students. The resulting ‘Value Ideation’ process comprises value ideation, value opportunity selection, and value proposition prototyping. The integration of design thinking into the innovation process helps to create additional forms of value and include formerly underserved stakeholders in the value proposition. Thus, the Value Ideation process helps companies to improve their performance while becoming more sustainable. Workshop evaluations revealed that the Value Ideation process assists companies in enhancing their value proposition by including positive economic, societal, and environmental value and a wider range of stakeholder interests. The ‘design thinking’ elements stimulate the ideation process and help to harmonise often conflicting stakeholder interests.This project was supported by ResCoM, which is co-funded by the European Union under the EU Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), Grant agreement number: 603843.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.07.02

Sustainable business model innovation: Process, challenges and implementation

The capability to rapidly and successfully move into new business models is an important source of sustainable competitive advantage and a key leverage to improve the sustainability performance of organisations. However, research suggests that many business model innovations fail. Despite the importance of the topic, the reasons for failure are relatively unexplored, and there is no comprehensive description of the sustainable business model innovation process in the literature. This research addresses this gap by sequentially employing four research methods. First, a literature review is conducted to synthesise a conceptual model as a framework for an empirical investigation. This investigation used two focus groups with ten participants, interviews with 61 senior managers of 24 organisations, and active participatory research, in which the researcher joined the teams of two different business model innovation projects for several months. The research provides the most comprehensive literature review on the definition and process of sustainable business model innovation to date. It identifies five different process steps of sustainable business model innovation as well as a comprehensive list of key activities and challenges associated with each step of the process. It also discusses how the resulting process framework could be translated into a management tool and outlines some insights on the organisational setup of the process and success factors. These findings can serve as hypotheses to guide further research on sustainable business model innovation and adjacent phenomena. It also provides direction for practitioners engaged in sustainable business model innovation in similar context as the ones investigated. As a result, the research can help organisations to structure their activities better, anticipate key challenges, and build up sustainable business model innovation capabilities

Business models and supply chains for the circular economy

The Circular Economy is increasingly seen as a possible solution to address sustainable development. An economic system that minimises resource input into and waste, emission, and energy leakage out of the system is hoped to mitigate negative impacts without jeopardising growth and prosperity. This paper discusses the sustainability performance of the circular business models (CBM) and circular supply chains necessary to implement the concept on an organisational level and proposes a framework to integrate circular business models and circular supply chain management towards sustainable development. It was developed based on literature analysis and four case studies. The proposed framework shows how different circular business models are driving circular supply chain in different loops: closing loops, slowing loops, intensifying loops, narrowing loops, and dematerialising loops. The identified circular business models vary in complexity of the circular supply chain and in the value proposition. Our research indicates circular business and circular supply chain help in realising sustainability ambitions.This work was supported by the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Industrial Sustainability [grant number EP/I033351/1

Circular business models: a review

The Circular Economy is gaining traction in academia, industry, and policy making as an alternative model that minimises resource depletion, waste, and emissions. To implement the concept on the organisational level, business models are an important leverage. A body of literature has emerged investigating the notion of circular business model and circular business model innovation, however, there is considerable lack of clarity about their theoretical conceptualisation. To address this and systematise the state-of-the-art of the nascent field of circular business models and circular business model innovation, we have reviewed this literature, employing systematic database searches and cross-reference snowballing. Our contributions to conceptual clarity are: (1) an overview of the history of the concepts of circular business model and circular business model innovation, (2) an overview and synthesis of definitions of circular business model and circular business model innovation, and (3) an overview and synthesis of conceptual frameworks for circular business model and circular business model innovation.UKRI funding relates to co-authors: This work was supported by the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Industrial Sustainability, grant number EP/I033351/1 and the EPSRC project Business Models for Sustainable Industrial Systems, grant number EP/L019914/1, as well as studentships from the EPSRC and the Foundation of German Business. This work was also supported by the research project CIRCit (Circular Economy Integration in the Nordic Industry for Enhanced Sustainability and Competitiveness), which is part of the Nordic Green Growth Research and Innovation Programme (grant number 83144) and jointly funded by NordForsk, Nordic Energy Research, and Nordic Innovation

Shifting the Focus to Measurement: A Review of Socially Responsible Investing and Sustainability Indicators

An increasing number of investors is including sustainability considerations in their investment processes. This can improve both financial and corporate sustainability performance. The emergence of sustainable investing as an academic research field has been accompanied by considerable interest from the industry. Despite its importance, there is still no uniform understanding of what a socially responsible investment (SRI) comprises. There is a multitude of similar terms that are not clearly defined and delineated, accompanied by a lack of a uniform understanding of how sustainability should be measured in the investment context. The resulting confusion hinders conceptual clarity, a material barrier for both scholarly and practitioner endeavours in the field. We try to address these issues by conducting a structured literature review based on database searches and cross-reference snowballing. We aim to provide a synthesised and unified definition of SRI and ancillary terms and to draw attention to the exact sustainability measurements. We (1) outline the history of the concept, (2) concisely define SRI and related terms, (3) propose a trinomial sustainability indicator framework (the Cambridge SRI indicator framework) for conceptualisation, and (4) use this framework to provide a structured overview of sustainability indicators for SRIs

Managing business model innovation for relocalization in the process and manufacturing industry

More and more industrial activities are performed outside of Europe. INSPIRE is a project, that is driven by the European process industry in order to facilitate the relocalization of process industry value chain activities to Europe. Within the project four business model archetypes (BMA) that facilitate this relocalization were identified: decentralization and modularization, mass customization, servitization and product service systems (PSS), circular business model, by name Re-use, Recycle and Sustainability (RR&S). For companies that want to adopt these business models, we have developed four INSPIRE Tools to integrate flexibilization into process industry business models concepts: Technologies Dashboard for the 5 INSPIRE BMA’s1, Business Model Innovation (BMI) Game, BMI Decision Support Tool for each BMA, and Business Model Archetype Revenue Pattern Map. This article presents the main results and partly reprints other relevant aspects from the INSPIRE deliverable D 4.4. It aims to provide recommendations for decision makers to choose the right business model given their specific context and key parameter

Towards Optimal Kinetic Energy Harvesting for the Batteryless IoT

Traditional Internet of Things (IoT) sensors rely on batteries that need to be replaced or recharged frequently which impedes their pervasive deployment. A promising alternative is to employ energy harvesters that convert the environmental energy into electrical energy. Kinetic Energy Harvesting (KEH) converts the ambient motion/vibration energy into electrical energy to power the IoT sensor nodes. However, most previous works employ KEH without dynamically tracking the optimal operating point of the transducer for maximum power output. In this paper, we systematically analyse the relation between the operating point of the transducer and the corresponding energy yield. To this end, we explore the voltage-current characteristics of the KEH transducer to find its Maximum Power Point (MPP). We show how this operating point can be approximated in a practical energy harvesting circuit. We design two hardware circuit prototypes to evaluate the performance of the proposed mechanism and analyse the harvested energy using a precise load shaker under a wide set of controlled conditions typically found in human-centric applications. We analyse the dynamic current-voltage characteristics and specify the relation between the MPP sampling rate and harvesting efficiency which outlines the need for dynamic MPP tracking. The results show that the proposed energy harvesting mechanism outperforms the conventional method in terms of generated power and offers at least one order of magnitude higher power than the latter

From circular business models to circular business ecosystems

Abstract: The circular economy aims to minimize resource inputs and waste and emission outputs of the economy and its organizational subsystems. This can benefit both financial and sustainability performance of companies. To analyze industrial implementation of the concept, the prevalent unit of analysis on the firm level is currently the circular business model. Our investigation of nine Swedish biogas companies and one branch organization indicates a range of conceptual shortcomings that challenges this approach. Our comparative case analysis points towards circular ecosystems being a more appropriate concept to describe the high level of coordination between different stakeholders necessary to implement circular systems. This increases the suitability to analyze, plan, and communicate circular economy systems on an organizational level, especially if value chain integration is low. An ecosystem perspective can thus support innovation and entrepreneurship in the context of the circular economy

Product, service, and business model innovation: A discussion

Business model innovation is increasingly recognised to be a central part of strategic management that generates the decisive competitive advantages for a growing number of organisations. This is particularly relevant in the areas of corporate sustainability strategy and sustainable entrepreneurship, since technological innovations in isolation yield increasingly incremental economic, social and environmental performance improvements. Despite the surge of research into business model innovation, there is still conceptual ambiguity among academics and practitioners about business model innovation. This lack of clarity not only poses issues for understanding what makes companies successful, but also for understanding how business model innovation relates to product and service development processes. To address these issues, we suggest a discussion that links sustainable business model innovation to the more established fields of product and service innovation. To start this conversation, we conducted a comprehensive literature review using structured keyword database searches and cross-reference snowballing. Based on the literature findings, we conducted two focus groups with industry representatives, resulting in the proposition of a first set of potential differentiation dimensions. The intended contribution is increased conceptual clarity for academic researchers and industrial decision makers. By improving our understanding of how business model innovation relates to product and service innovations, we can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of sustainable business model innovation research and implementation

Treatment of port wastes according to the paradigm of the circular economy

The problem of the presence of waste in the marine environment has recently taken on the dimensions of a complex and global challenge. In an effort to reduce both the economic and environmental costs of managing port waste, many ports are looking for sustainable solutions for marine waste management. Plasma-assisted gasification (PAG) is an innovative combination of two technologies, namely plasma treatment and gasification, which can be used to efficiently convert carbon-containing wastes to a clean syngas (H2 + CO). The latter can be used to generate electricity directly in gas engines, dual-fuel generators, gas turbines or fuel cells. PAG provides several key benefits which allow removing all the environmental, regulatory and commercial risks typically associated with the potential eco-toxicity of leachable bottom ash produced by incinerators or other thermal processes. PAG does not produce any waste (zero waste), reduces the need for landfilling of waste, and produces a high-value construction material (Plasmarok) which is recognized as a product. All these reasons make PAG a technology capable of optimally solving waste management in ports in line with a circular economy logic. This study is based upon the IMPATTI-NO Project (Interreg IT-FR Maritime Program 2014–2020) which implements several laboratory applications aimed at the chemical-physical treatment of the non-recyclable waste containing plastics deriving from the collection of beached waste and wastes collected by fishermen’s trawls and passenger ships. To demonstrate the effectiveness of PAG for the treatment of port waste, IMPATTI-NO performs experimental tests that simulate PAG pilot plants using artificial samples representative of port waste. This paper describes the research path developed so far and the preparatory elements that led to the definition of specifications for the sampling and collection of port waste