Business model innovation has seen a recent surge in academic research and business
practice. Changes to business models are recognised as a fundamental approach to realise
innovations for sustainability. However little is known about the successful adoption of
sustainable business models (SBMs). The purpose of this paper is to ...
Business model innovation has seen a recent surge in academic research and business
practice. Changes to business models are recognised as a fundamental approach to realise
innovations for sustainability. However little is known about the successful adoption of
sustainable business models (SBMs). The purpose of this paper is to develop a unified
theoretical perspective for understanding business model innovations that lead to better
organizational economic, environmental and social performance. The paper examines bodies
of literature on business model innovation, sustainability innovation, networks theory,
stakeholder theory and product-service systems. We develop five propositions that support
the creation of SBMs in a unified perspective which lays a foundation to support
organizations to investigate and experiment with alternative new business models. This
article contributes to the emerging field of SBMs, which embed economic, environmental and
social flows of value that are created, delivered and captured in a value network. It highlights
gaps for addressing the challenges of business model innovation for sustainability and
suggests avenues for future research.
