Sustainable business models for smallholder farmers:: Challenges for and lessons from the Barsha pump experience

Smallholder farmers (SFs) are cornerstone actors in eradicating poverty and hunger. Companies have recently focused on SFs as potential customers and suppliers. Several hindrances yet prevent SFs to be commercially viable actors. In this respect, sustainable business models (SBMs) bring opportunities for companies to increase profit, improve...

Co-creation of Affordable and Clean Pumped Irrigation for Smallholders: Lessons from Nepal and Malawi

Pumped irrigation is a way to intensify smallholder production. In this context, the Dutch company aQysta has developed the Barsha pump (BP), the first-ever commercial version of the spiral pumps. BPs, however, face several constraints that affect the decision-making and access of smallholders to this and other agricultural technologies, and...

Implementing sustainable design theory in business practice: A call to action

The intensification of industrial activity within an unsustainable development paradigm caused an alarming environmental crisis intertwined with societal problems on a global scale. Sustainable design theory contains an extensive body of knowledge on how these environmental and societal issues can be addressed by rethinking industrial...

The evolution of the Strategic role of Designers for Sustainable Development

Design for Sustainable Development refers to the application of a design process to solve a problem related to sustainability, such as creating a pair of shoes that can be recycled or managing waste collection in a large city. Since the origins of this concept in the 1960s, Design for Sustainable Development has been evolving, gradually...

Strategic Design of Sustainable Business Models

<br/>

Designing Sustainable Energy for All: Sustainable Product-Service System Design Applied to Distributed Renewable Energy

This open access book addresses the issue of diffusing sustainable energy access in low- and middle-income contexts.<br/><br/>Access to energy is one of the greatest challenges for many people living in low-<br/>income and developing contexts, as around 1.4 billion people lack access to electricity. <br/>Distributed Renewable Energy systems (DRE...