Sustainability-oriented business model development: principles, criteria and tools

Henning Breuer, Klaus Fichter, Florian Lüdeke-Freund and Irina Tiemann

International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing, 2018, vol. 10, issue 2, 256-286

Abstract: A shared understanding of the basic requirements for modelling sustainability-oriented business is currently missing. This is hindering collaboration, exchange and learning about sustainability-oriented business models as well as the development of suitable and widely-accepted modelling tools. We contribute toward such a shared understanding based on a theoretical discussion of boundary-spanning and interactive business model development for sustainable value creation. The theoretical discussion feeds into a comparative analysis of the six currently available practitioner tools supporting the exploration and elaboration of sustainability-oriented business models. By synthesising findings from theory and available tools, we define four guiding principles (sustainability-orientation, extended value creation, systemic thinking and stakeholder integration) and four process-related criteria (reframing business model components, context-sensitive modelling, collaborative modelling, managing impacts and outcomes) for the development of sustainability-oriented business models.

Keywords: corporate sustainability; business model; business model development; business model tool; value creation; innovation; innovation management; sustainable entrepreneurship; activity system; interaction economics; stakeholder; stakeholder integration; start-up; corporate venturing; impact management. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (37)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=92715 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ids:ijeven:v:10:y:2018:i:2:p:256-286

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing from Inderscience Enterprises Ltd
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Parker ().