The Sustainable Business Model Canvas, 11 Steps to designing a successful sustainability strategy

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The Sustainable Business Model Canvas, 11 Steps to designing and communicating a successful sustainability strategy

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One of the best ways to describe how your sustainability program is organised and delivers value is using a business model.

A business model is basically how a company creates value for itself while delivering products and services for its customers.

Sustainable business models also create economic, social, and environmental value for a wide range of stakeholders.

A tool called the business model canvas that allows you to describe, design, challenge, invent, and pivot any business model.

The first element in describing a business model is the value proposition. The value proposition is the collection of products and services that meets the needs of your customers.

It answers the question of what are you building and for whom?

It is not about the features of your product or service or your sustainability program

It is about solving a problem or a need.

What problem are you solving and for whom?

The next thing is customer segments. Who are my customers? And why would they buy into my sustainability program?

Who are they?

What job are they trying to do?

What problems are they facing?

What frustrates them?

What inspires them?

Next is channels

How does your product or service get from here to your customer here?

We use distribution channels to deliver our product to our customers.

We have physical channels like shop fronts or delivery services.

We also have virtual channels - web, mobile, cloud based channels.

Next, we need to consider Customer Relationships

How are we going to find, keep and grow our customers?

Next is Revenue streams

This section asks us to think about how our business makes money from our customer segments?

How we capture value? What is the strategy to capture that value?

Next, we want to think about resources.

What resources or key assets to we need to make the business model work?

This could include money. Do we have enough capital to deliver our sustainability program?

What physical assets do we need? Do we need factories? Do we need renewable energy systems?

It could include intellectual property. Do we need to protect our idea with patents? Do we need certain corporate knowledge?

Or do we need certain people? Do we need design engineers? Do we need company cultural experts? What human resources do you need?

Next comes Key Activities

These are the most important activities you need to do the make the business model work.

Do you manufacture products?

Do you need to audit your supply chain?

Do you need to undertake any R&D?


We now consider Key Partners

What key partners do we need to make the business model work?

What is interesting is that your key partners have a link to your key resources and key activities.

What resources do they provide that supports the business model?

And what activities are they going to perform?

Finally we have the Cost Structure
Once we understand the key activities, resources, and partners, it is relatively easy now to understand the costs associated with delivering the business model.

What are the costs to operate the business?

What do we need to invest in our key resources?

How much will our key activities cost?

What will we need to pay to our partners?


For Sustainable business models, we add two additional sections to the business model canvas

The first is Beneficiaries

Who benefits from our sustainability program?

What organisations benefit?

Which customers?

What other stakeholders derive some economic, social, or environmental value?

The second extra segment captures the Sustainability benefits

To which of the UN Sustainable Development goals does our business model contribute?

Using these eleven building blocks you can describe the infrastructure, the offering, the customers, the finances and the economic, social and environmental benefits of your sustainable business model. You can also use this canvas to design, discuss, and communicate your sustainability programs in a language other people will actually understand.

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