Things like CSR, energy-efficiency, carbon footprinting, Lifecycle analysis and fairtrade are instruments that a lot of professionals start to adopt today, and are familiar with.

I’m very happy that De Tijd also provided a lot of attention to our Business Game “play-it-forward” that does not start from a ‘responsibility’ point of view, but which is more like a creative and innovation approach. The main idea behind the business game is that you can create sustainability by improving and altering your business model.

No need to say that the business model canvas played a vital role within the training process.

It helped participants to position their ideas within a broad entrepreneurial context and to find non-conventional and competitive ways to market their offer, their idea, their new product or service.

Representatives from 10 different companies were present. The workshop aimed to inspire companies to think innovatively how they could value stone byproducts and inert wastes. Also, the organiser wanted to ensure that the existing cooperation between the companies continued so that the next stage of research could be embarked upon.
After the workshop, there was a general conviction that profitable ways can be found to deal with what was previously referred to as waste. Companies decided to proceed with their journey together in the search for optimal stone byproduct and inert waste value solutions…

Image of the workshop at RND

C2C is the infamous product design philosophy developed by Michael Braungart and William McDonough that proclaims that every good design starts from three main principles

- Waste equals food
- Use solar income
- Celebrate Diversity

Images and video often say more than words so have a look at McDonough’s speech at the TED conference in 2005 to know more about C2C.

However, product design is only one aspect of business and although the proliferation of C2C thinking is ubiquitous in all kinds of new domains, C2C might not solve all the issues we face.

Business Model Thinking (BMT) by contrast does not leave from a sustainability perspective and helps corporations to drive innovation from a holistic perspective. Because, it is obvious that companies can innovate more broadly than merely on product design. What about revenue structure innovation, customer relation innovation, market segment innovation, partner innovation and so on? Although all these ideas are somehow embedded in C2C as well, it is business model thinking that makes it more explicit and helps companies to visualize their ambitions on a single canvas, a single slide if you will.

We call this combination C4C: Cross Company Closed Cycle Cooperation for three distinct reasons. Future sustainable innovation will require:

- Closed Cycles: nothing goes to waste

- Multiple Companies: a focus on core competences forbids most companies to be in control from the cradle to the grave and back

- Cooperation: only a cooperative mindset can transform the chase for single benefit solutions into a run with multiple winners.

We believe this is part of the manual that companies will use if they want to succeed in the future. And as always the future starts now.

The project has two distinct goals. Firstly we will research existing literature, cases and best practices and link five differing streams of thought: business model innovation, resilience thinking, design management, sustainability and cradle to cradle.
With this backbone we are seeking for four SME’s, eager to step in a sustainable innovation project. The project will be paid for by Agentschap Ondernemen to a great extent which is of interest to everyone.

Do not hesitate to contact us if you want to learn more!

In an animated session 8 teams played the game and competed to redesign the business model of a fictious company in a more sustainable way. After two astonishing 3min pitches by the finalists, the audience voted their winner.

Following the masterclass given by Alex Osterwalder, we will present ‘Play it Forward’, the businessgame for sustainable business model design, developed by Pantopicon, BECO, Howest and Flanders InShape. Our game builds further upon the tools he developed. We added two building blocks to Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas, i.e. “societal & ecological costs and benefits”.

The game challenges companies to redesign their business model in a more sustainable way and was developed by Pantopicon, BECO and HOWEST, supported by Flanders InShape.