April 9, 2014 — You wouldn’t expect an MP3 player to play 8-track tapes, or the operating system from your first computer to run today’s software. Then why would anyone expect an old business model predicated on unsustainable assumptions (such as natural capital being endlessly available, free of charge) to successfully support sustainable enterprise? Yet many companies do just that — resulting in situations such as large, integrated utilities being unable to take advantage of the benefits of decentralized, smaller scale approaches to providing energy.

To help companies think outside the business-as-usual box, the sustainable enterprise think tank SustainAbility identified 87 innovative business models, dissected and analyzed them to see what makes them tick, then organized them into 20 types others can use as inspiration for their own reinvention. Specific types include:

  • physical to virtual — switching from tangible infrastructure to virtual services
  • inclusive sourcing — supporting the product source in producing the product
  • product as a service — selling the service a product provides rather than the product itself
  • freemium — offering a product or service at no cost, but charging for extras or upgrades.

Learn more — and find inspiration for your own enterprise — by downloading SustainAbility’s report, Model Behavior: 20Business Model Innovations for Sustainability. Photo by Yoel Ben-Avraham (Flickr | Creative Commons)