Sustainable Business Model Innovation: An Umbrella Review

A scientometric review of hotspots and emerging trends in sustainable business model

A sustainable business model (SBM) has become an inevitable trend for the traditional business model to follow the development of the times. Based on scientometrics, we explored and visually analyzed SBM's hotspots and emerging trends using the references co-citation networks, landmark references, burst references, keywords co-occurring networks, timeline map, and burst keywords indicators. Our findings consist of four aspects: hotspots and emerging trends, hotspots evolution history, landmark references, and burst references evolution history. First, the core hotspots are "sustainable innovation" and "open innovation". Second, the main hotspots have evolved from "sustainable innovation," "strategy," "performance," and "supply chain" from 1998 to 2012 into "resource-based view," "product-service system," "China," "life cycle assessment," and "conceptual framework" in 2013-2017. And "circular economy," "renewable energy," "value creation," "decarbonization" have appeared since 2019, which are emerging trends of SBM. Third, we have found ten landmark references in total. Articles written by Bocken & Short, Boons & Ludeke-Freund, and Zott & Amit are the three most landmark references that significantly impact the whole field. Last, the top 10 cited references have burst since 2011 and lasted until 2022. The article written by Teece became a long-term cited hotspot from 2011 to 2018. Moreover, the article written by Geissdoerfer & Vladimirova, which burst in 2020-2022, was the most cutting-edge. This research aims to enrich the existing research theories related to SBM and help governments and enterprises capture hotspots and emerging trends of SBM so that they can better understand and study SBM.

Catalysing the monitoring and evaluation of Nationally Determined Contributions through North-South cooperation

The recent 6th Assessment Report by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been damning to the world. An overwhelming amount of evidence that Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) can contribute to stabilising or reversing the course of impacts of climate change is now common. Given the likely update of NDC measures compounded by their complexities and limited resources, it is imperative to adopt effective Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) systems to ensure that NDCs achieve their planned objectives. Effective roll-out and M&E of NDCs require full participation from all actors in various countries. However, despite existing evidence that shows the developing countries are the most affected by climate change, the role of their researchers in climate change research is not known. Therefore, the need to investigate the global North-South disparities and develop an agenda for future research about NDCs is imperative. To address this gap, a systematic review was undertaken using appropriate terms in Web of Science, Dimensions and ScienceDirect to identify relevant literature. The analysis of the identified literature led to two main findings. Firstly, most studies about NDCs are conducted by global North research institutes and researchers with very little involvement of those from the global South. Secondly, there is a global paucity of research about M&E of NDCs measures. As a major recommendation, while countries should equitably contribute to rolling out NDC projects, research should play a key role and should be inclusive as possible representing voices from the global North and South.

Business-Civil Society Collaborations in South Korea: A Multi-Stage Pattern Matching Study

In this study, we use an empirical example to demonstrate how a multi-stage pattern matching process can inform and substantiate the construction of partial least squares (PLS) models and the subsequent interpretation of and theorizing from the findings. We document the research process underlying our empirical investigations of business – civil society collaborations in South Korea. The four-step process we outline in this paper can be used to ensure the meaningfulness of the structural model as well as to maximize the use of PLS for theorizing. This methodological advancement is particularly helpful in situations when literature reference points exist, but further contextual information may add nuances to prevalent knowledge. The findings from the qualitative flexible pattern matching part of the study prompted us to conduct a multi-group analysis. The resulting path changes in the base model led to the identification of four partnering strategies for business-CSO collaborations: (1) partnering for visibility; (2) partnering for compliance; (3) partnering for responsibility outsourcing; and (4) partnering for value co-creation.

Sustainable Hybrid Business Model of Benefit Corporation: The Case of an Italian Film Production Company

In the last decade, individual awareness of the impacts generated by the activities of businesses has increased more than ever. Consumers, employees and investors have begun to criticize business behaviors that negatively affect either society or the environment. Given this context, and relying on the literature relating to hybrid organizations and sustainable business models, our research aims to investigate how dual logic affects the business model of benefit corporations in the Italian film production industry. To capture the complexity of this type of firm, we adopted a qualitative research method, the case study approach. The case selected was ARE FILMS srl, a creative film production company. It has been a benefit corporation since it was founded. The study suggests that the capacity of hybrid businesses to achieve a hybrid mission is intrinsically embedded in their business model. A young film production benefit corporation is more likely to adopt a semi-integrated business model that does not create an external perception of dual corporate identity and does not affect economic sustainability. Moreover, the sustainable value proposition emerges even without the formal application of accepted protocols. Furthermore, we realized that the size of the firm affects business modelling. Finally, this research underlines the fact that benefit corporations do not require external pressure to implement sustainable practices.

Sustainable business model innovation literature: a bibliometrics analysis

Sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) has received growing attention since it can provide sustainable competitive advantages for corporations under a dynamic external environment. This paper aims to understand the current situations and progress of SBMI research by conducting a bibliometric study of the existing literature. By collecting data from Web of Science and using bibliometric tools, the basic characteristics of SBMI research are first presented to show the productivity and citations of publications utilizing recognized bibliometric indicators. Then, the cooperation networks among countries/regions, institutions, and authors are drawn to determine their collaborative relationships. Furthermore, keyword analysis is presented to explore the evolution of the hotspots and themes of SBMI research through co-occurrence analysis, burst detection analysis, and thematic evolution analysis. Finally, we integrate the antecedents-decisions-outcomes framework for SBMI research. The findings in this study indicate that the development of SBMI research is positive and that greater collaboration among institutions and authors is required to explore the internal drivers and design SBMI as well as other topics to be developed.

Towards Systematic Sustainable Business Model Innovation: What Can We Learn from Business Model Innovation

This research aims to understand how sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) can learn from business model innovation. For this, first, we conducted a bibliometric analysis to evaluate the relationships between business model innovation and SBMI literature. After this, we performed a systematic literature review to create a comprehensive framework for managing SBMI. The bibliometric analysis showed that the SBMI stream grew quickly and significantly in recent years, evolving into a separated new research stream, which does not leverage recent business model innovation advancements. Through the performed analyses, we were able to discuss critical gaps in the SBMI literature and shed light on possible pathways to solve these gaps through lessons learned from business model innovation. We depicted five critical gaps for managing SBMI; (1) the need to understand the sustainable business model as a wicked problem, in which SBMI leads to “better than before” solutions calling for systematic SBMI, (2) the poor definition of distinctive dimensions of dynamic capabilities for SBMI, (3) the lack of studies exploring the role of open innovation for improving the SBMI process, (4) the lack of tools supporting SBMI implementation and (5) the need to explore game-changing, competitive advantages of SBMI. The findings of this study contribute to guiding future research on SBMI, which can be a basis for further efforts towards sustainable development.

Consolidating Unorganised Retail Businesses through Digital Platforms: Implications for Achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals

This study explores whether digitalisation of unorganised retail (UR) businesses in emerging markets have a positive socio-economic impact on the lives of the subsistence consumer–merchants who perform the dual role of being, not only consumers providing for themselves and their families, but also the managers of micro-UR businesses. We develop a framework for sustainable business model innovation at the base of the pyramid by undertaking content analysis of 65 newspaper articles (interviews with senior executives and founders of digital app-based platforms, expert analysis) as well as social media and YouTube testimonials of UR business users of these platforms in Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. Using the Gioian coding structure of open and second order comparative coding, we develop a framework for sustainable business model innovation from the base of the pyramid perspective. The framework captures how digitalisation enables the UR businesses to circumvent resource shortages, consolidate procurement and inventory management and diversify product and service offerings, which leads to significant economic and social transformation for both the micro enterprises and their owners. Our framework contributes to the emergent literature on sustainable business model innovation and inclusive innovation in resource-constrained contexts. We conclude that sustainable business model innovations enable socio-economic transformations similar to those experienced by UR businesses in emerging Asian markets. Such developments can create local level pathways for local tropical countries seeking to achieve UN social development goals.

How Entrepreneurship Sustains Barriers in the Entrepreneurial Process—A Lesson from a Developing Nation

The aim of this study is to explore how entrepreneurship sustains the barriers in the entrepreneurial process in a developing country like Pakistan. To reach these findings, a qualitative approach was used in which semi-structured interviews were conducted with young entrepreneurs in the region of Hyderabad, Pakistan. After collecting data, thematic analysis was conducted. The findings of the study in the form of final themes suggest that trust issues, family barriers, financial issues, gender issues, educational barriers, corruption, and legal barriers are among the challenges which trigger changes in the entrepreneurial process and its sustainability. This study provides implications for the regional government, academic institutes, financial institutes, entrepreneurs, and society at large when developing a support system and promoting a sustainable entrepreneurial environment by minimizing these challenges and suggestions for an entrepreneurial focus on sustainable entrepreneurship.

Sustainability-Oriented Business Model Evaluation—A Literature Review

Since the need of sustainable development is indisputable, companies are forced to strive for resources, processes, and products that are sustainable. Thus, their business models as the main representation of their activities should be designed in an ecologically, economically, and socially beneficial way. However, designing and developing sustainable business models is closely linked to their evaluation. Sustainable business model evaluation as a vital part of business model development has been addressed in literature in the past with increasing frequency. As a consequence, the plethora of different approaches of sustainability-oriented business model evaluation calls for a systematic literature review. Thus, in this study, we reviewed existing articles on sustainability-oriented business model evaluation and identified four main categories of evaluation methods: single indicators (I), indicator system/framework (II), simulation-based evaluation (III), and multi criteria decision-making (IV). By analyzing and structuring the proposed approaches, their benefits and limitations are revealed, pointing out gaps and future research needs for successfully designing and evaluating business models today and in the future.

Explainable Ontology-Based Intelligent Decision Support System for Business Model Design and Sustainability

Background: Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is a problem-solving paradigm that uses knowledge of relevant past experiences (cases) to interpret or solve new problems. CBR systems allow generating explanations easily, as they typically organize and represent knowledge in a way that makes it possible to reason about and thereby generate explanations. An improvement of this paradigm is ontology-based CBR, an approach that combines, in the form of formal ontologies, case-specific knowledge with domain one in order to improve the effectiveness and explanation capability of the system. Intelligent systems make daily activities more easily, efficiently, and represent a real support for sustainable economic development. On the one hand, they improve efficiency, productivity, and quality, and, on the other hand, can reduce costs and cut waste. In this way, intelligent systems facilitate sustainable development, economic growth, societal progress, and improve efficiency. Aim: In this vision, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new generation of intelligent decision support systems for Business Model having the ability to provide explanations to increase confidence in proposed solutions. Findings/result: The performance results obtained show the benefits of the proposed solution with different requirements of an explanatory decision support system. Consequently, applying this paradigm for software tools of business model development will make a great promise for supporting business model design, sustainability, and innovation.