Sustainable business model innovation methods in eco systems for digitalization of Swedish manufacturing industry

Purpose and goal

Swedish industry is currently unable to capitalize on sustainable business models through digitalization due to lack of 1) appropriate business models knowledge and 2) insights on managing eco-system actors´ involvement. Therefore, this project has identified sustainable business opportunities and secured eco-system actors´ commitment for business model method development, implementation and dissemination.

Expected results and effects

During stage 1, the project team including five researchers have achieved following results. a) mapped 40 sustainable business model opportunities with 30 industrial actors; b) secured commitment from 5 customer actors and 4 digital actors and 2 service partner for stage 2; c) identified and defined 8 business cases with customer or end-user involvement; and d) new actors related to industrial network and marketing communication have been included to ensure higher reach of dissemination effort.

Planned approach and implementation

During stage 1, the project has successfully completed four key tasks: 1) initial mapping of opportunities for sustainable business models, 2) identifying potential customers-supplier cases, 3) identifying complementary eco-system actors, and 4) building preliminary business cases. Moreover, developed further insights for stage 2 (i.e. initial testing of the method) and stage 3 (i.e. validate and implementation of method) related to sustainable business model innovation methods by applying it to the business cases from an eco-system perspective.