Towards a sufficiency-driven business model : Experiences and opportunities

By Nancy M. P. Bocken, Samuel W. Short. 2016

477 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Business model innovation is an important lever for change to tackle pressing sustainability issues. In this paper, ‘sufficiency’ is proposed as a driver of business model innovation for sustainability. Sufficiency-driven business models seek to moderate overall resource consumption by curbing demand through education and consumer engagement, making products that last longer and avoiding built-in obsolescence, focusing on satisfying ‘needs’ rather than promoting ‘wants’ and fast-fashion, conscious sales and marketing techniques, new revenue models, or innovative technology solutions. This paper uses a case study approach to investigate how companies might use sufficiency as a driver for innovation and asserts that there can be a good business case for sufficiency. Business models of exemplar cases are analysed and insights are gained that will contribute to future research, policy makers and businesses interested in exploring sufficiency.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Marketing, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bae19db14bb28eda76f6d050dcbcb903d466fbbd

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Citations in the corpus

Unlocking circular business: A framework of barriers and drivers (2019, background): “Organizational Potential for differentiation and strengthening the company brand Increased understanding of sustainability demands Circularity integrated in company strategy and goals Development of skills and capabilities for CE Bocken et al. (2016); Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2013; Geng et al.”
Circular futures: What Will They Look Like? (2020, background): “solute demand by influencing and mitigating consumption behavior, going beyond eco-efficiency (Bocken and Short, 2016).”
What makes a sustainable business model successful? : An empirical comparison of two peer-to-peer goods-sharing platforms (2018, unknown): “…security, climate change) and social (e.g. social justice, community development) challenges requires radical and systemic changes in business practices that eco-innovation and eco-ef ﬁ ciency solutions alone are unable to attain (Bocken and Short, 2016; Bocken et al., 2014; Boons et al., 2013).”
Design for Circular Behaviour: Considering Users in a Circular Economy (2018, background): “Prolonging disposal Vitsoe aims to avoid the customer cycle of replacement and repurchasing through offering product-life prolonging services at nominal cost [44]”
Scaling up social businesses in developing markets (2016, background): “For example they move towards business models where functionality is more important than ownership or business models where sufficiency (slow consumption) is encouraged (Bocken et al., 2014; Bocken and Short, 2016).”
Sustainable business model adoption among S&P 500 firms: A longitudinal content analysis study (2018, background): “Encourage sufficiency (6) focused on slow consumption as part of a business model scores unsurprisingly low as this business model goes against typical business norms and is associated with relative niche players such as Patagonia and Vitsœ deliberately not trading on stock exchanges to preserve the”
Supply chain management and the circular economy: towards the circular supply chain (2018, unknown): “The company Patagonia, for example, designs sport clothing that lasts longer and it is suitable for repair and recycling at the end of its useful life (Bocken and Short, 2016).”