How sustainable is your business model?

Making business sustainable is high on managers agenda today. But how does sustainability relate to your business model? In the infographic below we show what the sustainability issues of each component of your business model are. 

Improve, expand and renew

According to Drucker, entrepreneurs should only be working on improving, expanding and renewal of their business to remain competitive. The problem is that all three activities take place at the same time and can have conflicting interests. Thinking in business models helps aligning these activities and make sure they all contribute to the same goal, the survival of the organisation.

 

Workshop Platform Open Data

Today I attended a workshop from “Platform Open Data” organised by ECP-EPN. It was an interesting mix of providers and users of open data that discussed various issues around Open Data in the Netherlands. Examples where provided by people from Buienradar who uses KNMI data, VWE using RDW data, Elsevier using CBS data and DHV using satellite data from NSO. It was a very open and positive discussion and I couldn’t help noticing that the business-models and -cases for the open data ecosystem still need some further development.

Building business on top of Open Data

Open Data is often linked to public sector information but it also covers private sector data that has been made publically available at (near) zero costs. For companies Open Data can be a commodity which, unlike minerals and oil, is available in unlimited quantities. Already companies generate revenues with products and services created with Open Data. The question is how they can keep their business sustainable when the suppliers of this data don’t consider themselves suppliers.

Free car insurance

The automotive industry is putting a lot of effort in developing smart and intelligent traffic systems. In the near future, cars will drive autonomously  to the desired destination. How can related industries, like insurance companies, respond to this development?

Ethics in business models

When I started working with business models, one of the first questions that crossed my mind was: Is it possible to predict if a business will be unethical by just analysing its business model? At that time I was reading “No logo” from Naomi Klein and I wondered if the use of sweatshops by multinationals was enforced by their business model or that it only was an implementation choice.