Corporate Sustainability Managing Responsible Business in a Globalised World

This chapter introduces business model innovation for sustainability as a new way of achieving corporate sustainability. Why is thinking about business models and business model innovation useful in this regard? Because business models are essentially about how companies create value for themselves and for their stakeholders, such as customers, employees or business partners. And value creation, in turn, relates in various ways to the natural environment and society. Hence, the business model perspective is very helpful in dealing with corporate sustainability challenges. In this chapter, we explain how business models support proactive approaches to corporate sustainability; how business model innovation can help integrate sustainability principles (such as efficiency, consistency or sufficiency) into companies’ activities; and how it can help companies extend their value creation potential to be more inclusive towards non-financial stakeholders. Finally, some patterns and tools to develop business models for sustainability are introduced.