Sustainable Business Models: A Review

Abstract

During the past two decades of the e-commerce growth the concept of business model has become increasingly popular. More recently, the research on this realm has grown rapidly with a diverse research activity covering a wide range of application areas. Considering the sustainable development goals the innovative business models have brought a competitive advantage to improve the sustainability performance of organizations. The concept of the sustainable business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts in a sustainable way. The process of sustainable business model construction forms an innovative part of business strategy. Different industries and businesses have utilized sustainable business models' concept to satisfy their economic, environmental and social goals simultaneously. However, the success, popularity, and the progress of sustainable business models in different application domains are not clear. To explore this issue, this research provides a comprehensive review of sustainable business models literature in various application areas. Notable sustainable business models are identified and further classified in fourteen unique categories, and in every category, the progress -either failure or success-has been reviewed and the research gaps are discussed. Taxonomy of the applications includes innovation, management and marketing, entrepreneurship, energy, fashion, healthcare, agri-food, supply chain management, circular economy, developing countries, engineering, construction and real estate, mobility and transportation, and hospitality. The key contribution of this study is to provide an insight into the state of the art of sustainable business models in various application areas and future research directions. This paper concludes that popularity and the success rate of sustainable business models in all application domains have been increased along with the increasing use of advanced technologies.

Business model based on strong sustainability: Insights from an empirical study

“…In addition, they stated that the infrastructure and the financial model-as elements of any business model-must be infused with sustainability principles. Other authors have emphasized the design of a sustainable value proposition that incorporates environmental, social, and economic value (Evans et al, 2017;Geissdoerfer, Bocken, & Hultink, 2016;Nosratabadi et al, 2019). Indeed, value flows toward a broader spectrum of stakeholders than purely shareholders or owners of a firm (Lee & Chang, 2019).…”

“…Third, as the SBM primarily addresses incorporating sustainability into existing businesses, the extant literature considers innovation in general, and the business model in particular, as the tools for achieving this goal (Sahebalzamani & Bertela, 2018;Geissdoerfer et al, 2018;Nosratabadi et al, 2019) (Nosratabadi et al, 2019). In other words, the practical apparatus aimed at value creation incorporates sustainability with the help of innovation (Hall & Wagner, 2012;Halme & Korpela, 2014).…”

“…The final commonality of the SBM is the long-term perspective (Nosratabadi et al, 2019). This long-term perspective stems from a sustainability definition concerning the ability to advance a long-term, multifaceted quality of life (Starik et al, 2016).…”

Sustainability Transition in Industry 4.0 and Smart Manufacturing with the Triple-Layered Business Model Canvas

“…From a strategic perspective, the inclusion of sustainability within a traditional business model leads to the creation of what is defined in the literature as a sustainable business model, namely a model which create competitive advantage through premium customer value, with attention to the implementation of all the pillars of sustainability: environmental, economic and social [48]. Sustainable business models are a topic increasingly covered in the literature and increasingly applied operationally in different sectors [49]. The introduction of a sustainable business model should be based on three main considerations: sustainable value (based on the three pillars of sustainability), pro-active multi-stakeholder management and long-term perspective [50].…”

The Identification of Values in Business Models of Tourism Enterprises in the Context of the Phenomenon of Overtourism

“…Nosratabadi et al [10] reviewed the work from various thematic areas. An interesting fact can also be seen in the literature analysis after 2007.…”