Transition Thinking and Business Model Innovation–Towards a Transformative Business Model and New Role for the Reuse Centers of Limburg, Belgium

Abstract

Abstract:The current dynamics of change, including climate change, resource depletion, energy transition, internet of things, etc. will have substantial impacts on the functioning of contemporary business models. Most firms and companies, however, still largely focus on efficiency strategies leading to sub-optimal solutions (reducing bad impact), rather than radically changing their business model to develop new transaction models more appropriate for today's world (doing better things). However, persistent sustainability issues arising from our changing societal systems, require more radical and structural changes both within and between organizations to change the way we do business. There is limited empirically established research literature on how businesses can be more proactive in this regard and how they can move beyond "management of unsustainability". In this paper, we present a transformative business model innovation approach inspired by transition theory combining elements of systems thinking, value-inspired envisioning, reflexive design and co-creation that was pioneered for a consortia of reuse centers in the province of Limburg, Belgium. We demonstrate that this approach contributed to the development of new business model concepts, was conducive for mobilizing support and resources to ensure follow up activity and holds potential to promote a more proactive role for businesses as agents of transformative change.

Assessing relations between Circular Economy and Industry 4.0: a systematic literature review

“…Li et al 2015) or implementing smart manufacturing practices (Kusiak 2018) (see Table 5). In rare cases, experts focused on exploitation of BDA for other reasons, such as improving disassembly sequence planning (Marconi et al 2018), considering recycling issues during product design (Lin 2018), assessing cost (Angioletti, Despeisse, and Rocca 2017) x (Bassi 2017) x (Bloomfield and Borstrock 2018) x (Clemon and Zohdi 2018) x x (Dutta et al 2001) x (Giurco et al 2014) x (Lahrour and Brissaud 2018) x (Le, Paris, and Mandil 2017a) x (Le, Paris, and Mandil 2017b) x (Leino, Pekkarinen, and Soukka 2016) x (Ma et al 2018) x (Mandil et al 2016) x (Mattos Nascimento et al 2018) x (Millard et al 2018) x (Minetola and Eyers 2018) x x (Müller et al 2018) x (Santander et al 2018) x (Sauerwein, Bakker, and Balkenende 2017) x (Sauerwein and Doubrovski 2018) x (Schmidt et al 2017) x (Sheng Yang et al 2017) x (Syed-Khaja, Perez, and Franke 2016)…”

“…Depending on the authors, AM can be exploited to (i) improve the overall CE performance ( (Miranda et al 2017), and (iv) improve the traceability of circular practices (Sharpe et al 2018). The IoT is considered by experts as a good method for linking product lifecycle management and digital manufacturing, for example, through cloud computing x x (Dutta et al 2001) x (Fisher et al 2018) x (Giurco et al 2014) x x (Liao et al 2017) x (Lopes de Sousa Jabbour et al 2018a) x (Lopes de Sousa Jabbour et al 2018b) x (Moreno and Charnley 2016) x (Nasiri, Tura, and Ojanen 2017) x (Okorie et al 2018) x (Pagoropoulos, Pigosso, and McAloone 2017) x (Planing 2017) x (Rajala et al 2018) x (Reuter 2016) x (Salminen, Ruohomaa, and Kantola 2017) x (Seele and Lock 2017) x (Srai et al 2016) x (Stock and Seliger 2016) x (Thomas 2018) x (Tseng et al 2018) x (Unruh 2018) x (X. Wang, Ong, and Nee 2018) x Total 5 4 3 13 (Barbosa et al 2016) x (Bassi 2017) x (Deschamps et al 2018) x (Gürdür and Gradin 2017) x (Hehenberger et al 2016) x (Holligan, Hargaden, and Papakostas 2017) x (Isaksson, Hallstedt, and Öhrwall Rönnbäck 2018) x (Jensen and Remmen 2017) x (Kusiak 2018) x (J.…”

“…Given the importance these two paradigms have acquired over time, much literature discusses CE and I4.0 from several perspectives (Liao et al 2017;Smart et al 2017;Govindan and Hasanagic 2018). However, there is still a great distance between theory and practice (Gorissen, Vrancken, and Manshoven 2016). Regarding the CE perspective, authors and scholars described challenges, opportunities, frameworks, models, and best-in-class multinationals (Angioletti et al 2016;Antikainen, Uusitalo, and Kivikytö-Reponen 2018;Askoxylakis 2018;Ge and Jackson 2014).…”

“…V. Wang and Wang 2018;Soroka et al 2017). Regarding the I4.0 perspective, many contributions assessed the potential support offered by key enabling technologies to companies (Ge and Jackson 2014;Isaksson, Hallstedt, and Öhrwall Rönnbäck 2018;He, Xu, and Xu 2010;Gorissen, Vrancken, and Manshoven 2016). However, only in a very few cases was the environmental benefit (the circularity level) reachable through the adoption of I4.0-based technologies assessed (Angioletti, Despeisse, and Rocca 2017;Lahrour and Brissaud 2018;van Schaik and Reuter 2016).…”

Identifying Emerging Trends of Financial Business Method Patents

“…In this context, the innovation in financial areas can be regarded as the effort to continuously obtain business opportunities [22,23]. The proposed approach here is to examine the way of achieving such a business opportunity by systematically utilizing both the structured and unstructured data of financial BM patents.…”