Participatory Design of Participatory Systems for Sustainable Collaboration: Exploring Its Potential in Transport and Logistics

Challenges involving economic, environmental, and societal aspects necessitate organisations in business networks to collaborate. The scientific problem central to this paper is the difficulty of building sustainable collaborations. The research question is how to support organisations in building sustainable collaborations in their business...

Closing the Loop: A Decision Support Framework for Circular Economy implementation to the adaptive reuse of vacant buildings in the Netherlands.

The Circular Economy (CE) in the built environment has gained ever more attention as discussions around the threats of global warming, resource scarcity, environmental impacts, and energy emissions intensify. The building industry accounts for approximately 40% of carbon emissions and reusing vacant buildings – thus slowing resource loops – is...

Sustainable business models for social innovation: The case of renewable energy cooperatives

The European Union has set its goal to produce at least 20 percent of the gross final consumption of energy from renewable energy sources by the year 2020. This ambitious measurement was taken to reduce the anthropogenic GHG emissions in order to mitigate the consequences of climate change. The economic and technical oriented strategies to...

An explorative study on business models for sustainability using STOF and stress-testing

A circular platform design for upper limb stroke rehabilitation

This project has been developed within the context of a startup company that aims to improve the problem of limited stroke recovery of the upper limb in the Netherlands. The company's value proposition consists of addressing this problem by means of artificially assisted therapy. The specific mission of this project has been to reconsider the...

Circular Business Models: A company perspective

This project aimed to research the perspective of companies on the relationship between sustainability and circular business models. This was done by first looking at how literature describes the relationship between sustainability and the circular economy/circular business models. With this as a basis, thirteen different multinational companies...

District Heating project development, a fragile business: Towards new collaboration and business models

An exploratory research into the role of business models and collaboration mechanisms in district heating project development. District heating is one of the main solutions of decarbonising the built environment, however it is only thinly researched and implemented. A generic collaboration model of district heating project development in the...

Product design and business model strategies for a circular economy

The transition within business from a linear to a circular economy brings with it a range of practical challenges for companies. The following question is addressed: What are the product design and business model strategies for<br/>companies that want to move to a circular economy model? This paper develops a framework of strategies to guide...

The changing role of Dutch property developers in urban development

In recent years Dutch real estate developers have been subject to some societal market trends that force them to change roles (Heurkens, 2013). The decreased demand for office space, limited debt funding, challenging user demands, stalling public investments, and increased competition from new companies, necessitate developer to deploy more new...

Sustainability Maturity Model: The Pilot Sustainability Agenda-Setting in Business

The Master’s programme Industrial Ecology is jointly organised by Leiden University and Delft University of Technology. Sustainable development is a young, developing field in which many standards, certificates, and initiatives are spawning. Companies are expected to work on sustainable development by its customers, investors, and society in...

Extending the Loop: Developing a business model for carpet tiles

Interface is an international manufacturer of carpet tiles with a long history in sustainability. With its mission Zero, Interface wants to become the first company without a negative impact on the environment by the year 2020. Over the years Interface already made significant progress by means of product innovations and organizational changes....

Can REDD+ contribute to private sector development in sustainable fuelwood and charcoal production in Rwanda?

The expected increase in future demand of biomass feedstock in Rwanda cannot be met because of constraints at the supply side. This has a negative effect on the energy security for Rwandese in the future and the income generated for the Rwandan population involved in biomass feedstock production. There are, however, opportunities to stimulate...

Managing of construction-related business in environment-ally sustainable ways - a focused review of 62 concepts

The on-going literature review has revealed a platform of the 62 construction-related business management (BM) concepts, published mainly via the journals between the years 1990-2009. The aim of this paper is to enhance the managing of construction-related businesses in highly environmentally sustainable ways. A focused review resulted in the...

Advancement of sustainable development, contracting, design, and supply business vis-a-vis construction markets

The background involves the multiplication of Porter's (1980) five forces framework and the prior design of the 8-arena framework for capturing complexity of managing businesses within each of hundreds of (inter)national construction markets. In turn, the aim of this theoretical paper is to advance environmental sustainability as part of...

FOCISS: A framework for developing a sustainable buisiness strategy

Most companies find it difficult to integrate sustainability in their business strategy in such way that it will „pay off?. Sustainability with its opportunities and challenges are not understood in its real meaning for their business. A major factor is that a distinction in essential and non-essential (and even irrelevant) issues for the core...