Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group (SSBMG)

How can organizations become sustainable in economic, social and environmental dimensions, and contribute to a new sustainable economy? Sustainability can be approached in many ways and from numerous perspectives. At Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab), the multi-disciplinary Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group (SSBMG) has chosen to explore sustainability from the perspective of business models.

The SSBMG was founded with the objective of providing a focal point for collaboration in applied research on this topic. The group includes industry practitioners, faculty and graduate students from OCAD University's Strategic Foresight & Innovation program, as well as from York University.

SSBMG focuses primarily on the middle and bottom of the pyramid of organizations including start-up, SMB and SME categories. We are working to develop a toolkit that can link into organizations’ decision-making, and help guide it toward holistic sustainability. To achieve our objectives our research agenda is organized along a number of topics:

• Undertake human-centric research how leaders in the categories of organizations concerned actually make decisions and what role, if any, business models play in this context
• Develop and validate the ontology for strongly sustainable business models
• Explore advanced methods of impact measurement and valuation of social and environmental benefits that can support decision making in organizations, particularly in the context of business models
• Identify and map the processes related to business strategy decisions in these organizations
• Use design methods to develop a tool kit and test the kit with organizations to further improve it and to create case studies
• Use learnings from the above activities to define new guidelines for incubation and acceleration activities.

Members of SSBMG are currently articulating joint research projects, and we welcome interested researchers and practitioners. For more information please contact SSBMG convener, Dr. Nabil Harfoush.

Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group website http://www.SSBMG.com

Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group (SSBMG) on LinkedIn