No abstract

Businesses will play a key role in helping the transition towards greater sustainability. To maximise business sustainability performance, sustainability characteristics must be integrated at the business model level, creating business models for sustainability. Creating a business model for sustainability, or transitioning from a traditional business model, is likely to be a complicated and challenging process. Previous research has identified a range of barriers, such as low financial report or little legislative support. The aim of this research is to explore and identify critical success factors and barriers for the transition from traditional business models to business models for sustainability. Previous research provides indications as to the barriers faced when attempting to develop BMfS, but does so using conceptual lenses that emphasise external influences and factors. We seek to explore the process of business model innovation for sustainability from a perspective that pays greater attention to internal processes and from a management perspective, building on concepts of organisational change management. The research focuses on start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME's) in the Dutch Food and Beverages Industry. This is an interesting empirical context, as this sector is a dynamic, economically significant in the Netherlands, and is under pressure to improve its environmental performance. Data is collected from 14 cases, using semi-structured interviews, and is then analysed to identify a range of critical success factors and barriers. We find that collaboration, a clear narrative and vision, continual innovation, a sustainable foundation, profitability, and serendipitous external events are all critical success factors for the transition to business models for sustainability. Barriers include external events, principle-agent problems as well as a lack of support from wider actors and systems. The results highlight that businesses wishing to develop a business model for sustainability must make sustainability the key principle upon which the firm is founded. Continual development and improvement is required in addition to the support of a range of different actor's external to the firm, such as suppliers, customers, and government.

No abstract

No abstract

To create a sustainable future, innovations are needed that integrate socio-ethical issues. Responsible innovation provides a method for managing these issues, and tries to ensure that innovation is conducted for and with society. The application of responsible innovation in industry contexts, where many of these innovations are developed, is limited by challenges related to dominant business logics, stakeholder management problems and resource constraints. Open innovation is an approach more commonly employed within industry contexts, which involves activities that overlap with responsible innovation dimensions and practices. This means that open innovation could represent a way to integrate the management of socio-ethical factors into industry contexts in a less disruptive and costly way. This paper explores the extent to which open innovation and responsible innovation overlap and could be compatible. Both open innovation and responsible innovation are reviewed theoretically before an empirical enquiry is launched through semi-structured interviews (n=11) with entrepreneurs developing innovations in the context of climate-smart agriculture in Europe. We find evidence for compatibility between exploratory open innovation activities and dimensions of responsible innovation. Results indicate that the management of socio-ethical issues through open innovation requires sensitivity to ethical issues and a motivation to include ethical considerations strategically in innovation processes. These findings are incorporated into a provisional extended open innovation model for the management of socio-ethical in industry contexts – an Open Innovation 2.0.