TY - JOUR
T1 - Addressing the design-implementation gap of sustainable business models by prototyping
T2 - A tool for planning and executing small-scale pilots
AU - Baldassarre, Brian
AU - Konietzko, Jan
AU - Brown, Phil
AU - Calabretta, Giulia
AU - Bocken, Nancy
AU - Karpen, Ingo O.
AU - Hultink, Erik Jan
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge financial support through the ZERO BRINE project. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730390 .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020
PY - 2020/5/10
Y1 - 2020/5/10
N2 - Next to the redesign of industrial products and processes, sustainable business model innovation is a strategic approach to integrate environmental and social concerns into the objectives and operations of organizations. One of the major challenges of this approach is that many promising business model ideas fail to reach the market, which is needed to achieve impact. In the literature, the issue is referred to as a "design-implementation gap." This paper explores how that critical gap may be bridged. In doing so, we contribute to sustainable business model innovation theory and practice. We contribute to theory by connecting sustainable business model innovation with business experimentation and strategic design, two innovation approaches that leverage prototyping as a way to iteratively implement business ideas early on. Using a design science research methodology, we combine theoretical insights from these three literatures into a tool for setting up small-scale pilots of sustainable business models. We apply, evaluate, and improve our tool through a rigorous process by working with nine startups and one multinational company. As a result, we provide normative theory in terms of the sustainable business model innovation process, explaining that piloting a prototype forces organizations to simultaneously consider the desirability (i.e., what users want), feasibility (i.e., what is technically achievable), viability (i.e., what is financially possible), and sustainability (i.e., what is economically, socially and environmentally acceptable) of a new business model. Doing so early on is functional to bridge the design-implementation gap of sustainable business models. We contribute to practice with the tool itself, which organizations can use to translate sustainable business model ideas defined "on paper" into small-scale pilots as a first implementation step. We encourage future research building on the limitations of this exploratory study by working with a larger sample of companies through longitudinal case studies, to further explain how these pilots can be executed successfully. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
AB - Next to the redesign of industrial products and processes, sustainable business model innovation is a strategic approach to integrate environmental and social concerns into the objectives and operations of organizations. One of the major challenges of this approach is that many promising business model ideas fail to reach the market, which is needed to achieve impact. In the literature, the issue is referred to as a "design-implementation gap." This paper explores how that critical gap may be bridged. In doing so, we contribute to sustainable business model innovation theory and practice. We contribute to theory by connecting sustainable business model innovation with business experimentation and strategic design, two innovation approaches that leverage prototyping as a way to iteratively implement business ideas early on. Using a design science research methodology, we combine theoretical insights from these three literatures into a tool for setting up small-scale pilots of sustainable business models. We apply, evaluate, and improve our tool through a rigorous process by working with nine startups and one multinational company. As a result, we provide normative theory in terms of the sustainable business model innovation process, explaining that piloting a prototype forces organizations to simultaneously consider the desirability (i.e., what users want), feasibility (i.e., what is technically achievable), viability (i.e., what is financially possible), and sustainability (i.e., what is economically, socially and environmentally acceptable) of a new business model. Doing so early on is functional to bridge the design-implementation gap of sustainable business models. We contribute to practice with the tool itself, which organizations can use to translate sustainable business model ideas defined "on paper" into small-scale pilots as a first implementation step. We encourage future research building on the limitations of this exploratory study by working with a larger sample of companies through longitudinal case studies, to further explain how these pilots can be executed successfully. (C) 2020 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
KW - Sustainable innovation
KW - Business model innovation
KW - Business experimentation
KW - Design thinking
KW - Implementation
KW - Prototyping
KW - CIRCULAR ECONOMY
KW - INNOVATION
KW - THINKING
KW - FIELD
KW - EXPERIMENTATION
KW - TECHNOLOGY
KW - ACCEPTANCE
KW - MANAGEMENT
U2 - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120295
DO - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120295
M3 - Article
SN - 0959-6526
VL - 255
JO - Journal of Cleaner Production
JF - Journal of Cleaner Production
M1 - 120295
ER -