Panel debates
Practical use of sustainable business model innovation tools in the Innovation ecosystem
Panel facilitator
Peter Uppman, Innovation Strategist, Region Halland
Panel description and relevance
For a decade the Swedish innovation ecosystem, especially the incubators and science parks, have used the Business model canvas and other similar tools in the coaching of startups. As the demand for sustainable business model innovation is increasing, the tools and models used also need to change accordingly. The focus of this panel is on the existing and established practices and tools for sustainable business model innovation. In this panel, the panelists will discuss and illustrate how their organizations work with business model innovation tools such as Sustainable Business Model Canvas, exploring the challenges and rewords when considering sustainability in the business modelling process. A special attention will be paid on how to make business models more inclusive and encompassing social aspects, along with environmental and economic ones. Some enablers for sustainable business model innovation will also be discussed – data, ecosystems driving innovation and collaborative partnerships. Being anchored in the existing practices and having a rich experience, the panelists are bringing many practical examples and illustrations from their ongoing work.
Panelists
Anna Petersson, Head of Innovation, High Five, Halmstad Business Incubator AB
Lena Miranda, CEO Linköping Science Park, Chair at Swedish Incubators & Science Parks
Murat Samanci, Innovation Specialist, S3i - Sustainable Investments in Infrastructure and Innovation (UNOPS)
The Role of Sustainable Business Models for a Regenerative and Distributive Economy
Panel facilitator
Bill Baue, Senior Director r3.0 and Ralph Thurm, MD r3.0 (Impulse)
Panel description and relevance
This panel discusses the role of academic research and engagement on sustainable business models in a regenerative & distributive economy. That includes discussion about:
embracing ‚back-casting from an ideal‘. This is not new and was developed by The Natural Step in quite some depth. It has given us at r3.0 a solid basis for the design of our work eco-system. Wouldn’t that be ideal for the design of academic programs that delivers towards what’s really needed for a regenerative & distributive economy? What’s holding us back? How to come to that ideal?
overcoming missed academic visibility in a couple of areas that are decisive for our future: sus-tainability context (threshold & allocations), multicapitalism (which capitals, interrelation of capitals, clarification that multicapitalism is not a prolongation of capitalism), further work on the ideal of a regenerative & distributive economy (what’s the ‚ideal‘?), interrelations in complex systems, etc. All of this is necessary ‚infrastructure‘ to discuss NBMs bridging be-tween the existing and an envisaged regenerative & distributive economy.
the recognition of multi-level problem solving. r3.0 created a Work Ecosystem that allows to near all problems from the perspectives of science, behaviour, finance, growth/debt, system value, fractal economies, education and governance. It needs much more multidisciplinary collaboration in the academic world to aim to solve any of the great issues of our time. How can this be done? And what would it mean for NBMs? What sort of institutions and collabo-rations are needed? What institutional barriers might conflict with multi-disciplinary prob-lem solving.
Panelists
Anders Bjørn, Horizon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Management, Concordia University, Canada.
Raz Godelnik, Associate Director & Assistant Professor Design & Management Parsons School of Design, New York.
Nancy Bocken, Professor in Sustainable Business Maastricht Sustainability Institute, Maastricht University.
Romana Rauter, Associate Professor on Sustainability and Innovation Management, University of Graz, Austria.
Mission-oriented innovation policies and sustainable business models
Panel facilitator
Thomas Magnusson, professor of innovation sciences at Halmstad University and professor of industrial management at Linköping University.
Panel description and relevance
Taking international and national targets on carbon neutrality as a starting point, this panel will discuss how governmental agencies put mission-oriented innovation policies into practice to support sustainable businesses development. Mission-oriented innovation policies refer to policies that addresses grand societal challenges. Such policies depend on purposive and systematic interventions to stimulate technological, institutional and business-model innovation. By means of mission-orientation, governments and their agencies intervene to create and shape markets, thus providing direction for both new enterprises and established business firms. Missionoriented innovation policies are more complex than traditional market-failure approaches to innovation policy. They assume a dynamic and reflexive governance process where policy interventions using different kinds of instruments align with business development. It has implications for the operationalization, follow-up and evaluation of interventions, going from ex ante to experimental approaches. The panel discussion will touch upon a broad range of interventions and policy instruments, ranging from R&D funding, investment support and subsidies, to regulation, public procurement and information campaigns.
Panelists
Oskar Jonsson, Innovation Manager at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
Charlotte Lejon, Department Head at the Swedish Energy Agency
Daniel Rencrantz, Department Head for data-driven development & AI at the Innovation Management Division of the Swedish Innovation Agency – Vinnova
Marie Ahlgren, Head of Customer and Business Development at Almi Företagspartner AB
Can Ideas Change the World? Business Model Categories as Tools for Addressing the Sustainable Development Goals
Panel facilitators
Sergio Alves and Dr. Sujith Nair (Umeå School of Business, Economics and Statistics at Umeå University, Sweden).
Panel description and relevance
Concepts like Sustainable or Circular Business Model are not only academic constructs but also terms increasingly found in practitioners' discourse regarding sustainability issues. From a research perspective, we can define this empirical phenomenon as Business Model Categories (BMCs), i.e., ideas, shared by practitioners, of how firms can create and capture value in particular ways. While studies that explicitly address BMCs are scarce, the literature still offers some insights. It suggests that BMCs can shape firms' behavior (e.g., by working as 'templates' during business model innovation processes) and that different actors (e.g., scholars and consultancy firms) contribute to the emergence of BMCs. Thus, BMCs can potentially be an important tool to address the Sustainability Development Goals, and scholars and other actors can play an important role in enabling it. Despite this, the topic of BMCs remains largely unexplored.
Consequently, this panel aims to provide insights on BMCs by exploring three topics. The panel will discuss what BMCs are and how they become established ideas amongst practitioners. It will also address how BMCs can affect firms into becoming more sustainable. Finally, the panel will explore what scholars and practitioners can do to enable BMCs’ emergence and impact. Time will also be allocated for questions from the audience.
We hope that the discussion can enrich and advance the academic understanding of BMCs in the context of sustainability and provide practitioners with actionable advice into how BMCs can be used, in their daily work, to address the Sustainability Development Goals.
Panelists
Dr. Tatiana Dia, Lecturer in Strategic Management at Lancaster University Management School (UK)
Dr. Herman I. Stål, Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer in Business Administration at the School of Business, Economics, and Law in Gothenburg
Dr. Katherine Whalen, Researcher in Sustainable Business at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden