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Business Models for Sustainability Transitions

How Organisations Contribute to Societal Transformation

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  • © 2021

Overview

  • Explores the powerful synergies unlocked in combining the two research streams of sustainability transitions and business models for sustainability.
  • Offers new insights on business model innovation as a catalyst for system-wide sustainability transitions.
  • Reveals how profound innovations in society and the economy can create space for new and sustainable business concepts to emerge and prosper

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

  1. Crossing the Chasm: Integrating Business Model and Sustainability Transition Perspectives

  2. Beyond Business-as-Usual: Alternative Value Creation Logics Driving Sustainability Transitions

  3. Being the Change: Transformative and Transformed Business Models in Selected Industries

Keywords

About this book

Can innovations in business change society? Can innovations in society change business? These two questions have become critically urgent in recent years, but are rarely considered together. ‘Business Models for Sustainability Transitions’ therefore asks, can contemplating both concepts together result in a flourishing, sustainable future? Technology alone cannot save us. We cannot consciously consume our way out of trouble. This book represents a start at bridging the dynamic world of business model innovation with the constant and unprecedented transitions underway in the world around us. For researchers, practitioners, and policy makers, the coupling of the two questions has the potential to unlock answers to our grand global challenges with responses that are at the same time rapid and enduring. This work offers unique and considered glimpses into what it may take to harness wide-ranging innovations for the collective good.

Reviews

"The business model lens and the recognition of our institutionalized ‘unsustainable’ business models, such as the take-make-dispose linear business model in sustainability transitions, provides a new and exciting perspective. The book “Business Models for Sustainability Transitions” presents multiple interdisciplinary perspectives on the focus areas of business models and sustainability transitions, including various case studies and lenses to investigate the topic. In this way, this edited book provides a unique pathway forward for theory and practice on sustainability transitions and the potential positive role of business."

Nancy Bocken, Professor in Sustainable Business, Maastricht Sustainability Institute, Maastricht University, Netherlands


​"Research on business models for sustainability has become a field in its own right. This book is taking the next step and connects the firm-level with socio-technical systems in which the business is embedded. A much needed step to understand how business models can contribute to a sustainable development of markets, the economy, society and the planet!"

Stefan Schaltegger, PhD,  Professor for Sustainability Management, Head of the Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM) and the MBA Sustainability Management, Leuphana University, Germany

Editors and Affiliations

  • Business Development & Technology, Aarhus University, Herning, Denmark

    Annabeth Aagaard

  • European Sustainability Department, ESCP Business School, Berlin, Germany

    Florian Lüdeke-Freund

  • Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Peter Wells

About the editors

Annabeth Aagaard is an Associate Professor and the founding Director of Interdisciplinary Centre for Digital Business Development at Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research is focused on sustainable and digital business development, ecosystems and innovation, from which she has (co)‐authored 14 textbooks, including “Sustainable Business Models - Innovation, Implementation and Success”, Palgrave.

Florian Lüdeke-Freund is Professor for Corporate Sustainability at ESCP Business School, Berlin. He serves on the editorial boards of different journals, and has authored or edited four books, including “Sustainable Business Model Design”. He founded www.sustainablebusinessmodel.org. 

Peter Wells is a Professor of Business and Sustainability, and Director of the Centre for Automotive Industry Research, at Cardiff Business School, UK. He is author or editor of 11 books and is frequently quoted in the New York Times, Forbes, Bloomberg, the BBC and other international news sources.


Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Business Models for Sustainability Transitions

  • Book Subtitle: How Organisations Contribute to Societal Transformation

  • Editors: Annabeth Aagaard, Florian Lüdeke-Freund, Peter Wells

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77580-3

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Business and Management, Business and Management (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-77579-7Published: 12 November 2021

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-77582-7Published: 13 November 2022

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-77580-3Published: 11 November 2021

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XXXIII, 368

  • Number of Illustrations: 23 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Corporate Environmental Management, Business and Management, general

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