The Business Model of ""Enough

Abstract

As green consumption and eco-modernism so far have failed to significantly reduce the ecological impact of consumption, new approaches are needed to meet sustainability criteria. Next to technology-focused efficiency (relative reduction of energy and material use) and consistency (cradle-to-cradle design) approaches, sufficiency is a specific kind of behavior-based sustainability strategy that addresses how to make do with less. In this contribution, we explore a novel business model framework in order to address sufficiency-based consumer practices. Applying social practice theory reveals levers in terms of materials, competences, and meanings to support sufficiency-based lifestyles. Key challenges are including consumers in the value creation process and adapting value capture processes accordingly. By reconstructing the classical business model – value proposition, creation, and capture – from such a social practice theory perspective, this contribution shows that a sufficiency orientation critically changes our understanding of business models. In developing sufficiency-based alternatives to consumer practices, businesses become extensions of their customers’ practices. Value co-creation means not only that consumers increasingly act as prosumers but that businesses participate in consumer practices. Such an extended value creation implies an increasing inclusion of environmental and societal aspects beyond the boundaries of a business and may hint at a new understanding of a firm’s boundaries as a fluid network of collaborative practices.