C4C: The Future of Sustainable Strategies
What do you get when you combine cradle to cradle (C2C) with business model thinking (BMT)? In the next short text, we will enlighten you on what we think the answer is.
C2C is the famous 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: Partnerships can control entire supply chains from “cradle to cradle” while simultaneously allow individual companies to focus on their core competences. Such a joint business case is a huge innovation driver
- 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 Story of Stuff
Annie Leonard ends this 20-minute animation with “So let’s create something new!” and is our starting point.
View more animations from www.storyofstuff.com. A nice one is the documentary explaining the complex issues with cap & trade.
