Sustainable System Value Creation: Development of Preliminary Frameworks for a Business Model Change Within a Systemic Transition Process

Abstract

Although corporate sustainability has gained more attention and companies have recently showed a growing interest in sustainable practices, the progress towards sustainable development has been slow leading to increasing environmental and social challenges. . Business model innovations are recognized as a key to the creation of sustainable business and as a bridge between company level and system level changes. Sustainable business model innovations create, deliver and capture economic, social, and ecological value for customers and other stakeholders in various societies. The aim of this article is to deepen the understanding of the ways how companies create and capture sustainable value through business models in a larger operation system. From the theoretical perspective, the article adopts the transition theory and the concept of strong sustainability for understanding socio-technical transitions and business model changes towards sustainability. Here the focus is on companies’ dualistic role pursuing sustainable development targets – both contributing to sustainability within the business dimensions, and assisting the broader systemic change through the new sustainable business models. Furthermore, the article deals with the external factors that either enable or hinder companies to transform their existing business models towards sustainability. By reviewing previous literature, this study develops preliminary frameworks combining the approaches of transition management, sustainable value creation and corporate sustainability levels. The work aims to decrease the existing gap between the literature of system transition and business models. The frameworks can be applied in the future in analyzing new sustainable business models, value processes, value creation and capture, and broader systemic changes towards sustainability.