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In current supply chains, material suppliers sell raw material resources to producers who sub-sequentially sell produced resourced to consumers. Ownership of resources, therefore, shifts from a few organisations to many consumers who are responsible to deal with them at the end of life. Product-service systems are business models where producers retaining ownership of produced resources have increased control on obsolete resources. Motivated by the need to facilitate an unlimited use of materials and eliminate waste, this research has introduced the concept of material-service systems, which are business models where material suppliers offer materials as a service to product producers. These systems offer the advantage that material suppliers are in control of resources and are incentivized to revalorise them. A scenario is explored in which a material-service system operates in conjunction with a product-service system and one in which it functions on its own. Finally, the benefits and incentives of the proposed service systems are discussed along with potential enablers and challenges.

Conceptualising firms from a business ecosystem, value-, or supply- network perspective captures the boundary-spanning nature of value creation. However, the relationship dynamics that enable or inhibit sustainable value creation, as well as the understanding of how to resolve trade-offs in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM), need to be better understood. To explore these, we present a comparative case study of how situational logics and power relations are embedded in business models within a UK brewer and its malt supply chain. The exploratory case illustrates how network-centric business model innovation (BMI) resolves the trade-off between economic and environmental value through the prioritisation of sustainability-related ‘cultural’ resources. These findings suggest that organisations seeking to implement sustainable supply networks need to pay greater attention to how they use business model innovation to institutionalise situational logics that enable or inhibit sustainable value creation and resolve trade-offs.

Successful entrepreneurship relies on the development of an idea and its execution in such a way that value is captured. The idea of value, however, is often framed solely as market return, rather than a more inclusive understanding of value as social good. Ethical and normative considerations are often ‘nice to have’ and treated, if at all, as an add-on rather than an integrated part of doing business. In this paper, I describe a pedagogical module for ‘sustainability entrepreneurs’ that has been developed as part of an MSc course at Imperial College London. Students are challenged to develop business models that have a well-integrated environmental, social and economic value proposition and challenge the dominant neoliberal business rhetoric. The key skill developed through the module is critical reflexivity. This allows students to see that they could shape the world through their own agency and break out of conventional modes of doing business to place values at the heart of their business models.

Business experimentation is a key avenue for accelerating change for sustainability. In contrast to experimentation in natural sciences, benefitting from controlled situations, business experimentation aims to explore the diverse possibilities that a business could create value from, or understand what works in which particular situations in a real life business context. While at present most popular with start-ups, this paper argues that large businesses can also find inspiration in business experimentation to develop sustainable business models and accelerate positive change for sustainability. Five illustrative cases are included of business experimentation for sustainability by focusing on pivots (modifications) in the business model. This paper only scratches the surface of the potential impactful new research field of business (model) experimentation for sustainability. Future work on sustainable business experimentation for start-ups and mature businesses is viewed as a powerful future research avenue to accelerate change in industries.

Traditional production frameworks and business models are now being challenged by alternatives that are informed by biology. The alternative paradigm, based on ecosystem models, argues that shifting from linear modes of production to a circular system can address material and energy efficiency by reducing the total volume of raw materials needed when manufacturing consumer products. This chapter introduces frameworks that apply closed-loop models at the product level namely; the Performance Economy, Cradle-to-CradleTM design, The Blue Economy and the Circular Economy. We discuss the historic development of these ideas and their main contributions. Through the use of examples we explore both practical challenges associated with realising circular strategies as well as their business model implications. We conclude by highlighting some of the theoretical challenges associated with adopting closed-loop models advocating for a critical approach to sustainable resource management which includes circular strategies as part of a toolbox of options.