Sustainable System Value Creation: Development of Preliminary Frameworks for a Business Model Change Within a Systemic Transition Process

Although corporate sustainabilityCorporate sustainability has gained more attention and companies have recently showed a growing interest in sustainable practices, the progress towards sustainable developmentSustainable development has been slow leading to increasing environmental and social challenges. Business model innovationInnovations are recognized as a key to the creation of sustainable business and as a bridge between company levelCompany level and system levelSystem level changes. Sustainable business model innovationsBusiness model innovation create, deliver and capture economic, social, and ecological value for customers and other stakeholdersStakeholders in various Value creation societies. The aim of this chapter is to deepen the understanding of the ways how companies create and capture sustainable valueSustainable value through business models in a larger operation system. From the theoretical perspective, the chapter adopts the transition theoryTransition theory and the concept of strong sustainabilit Strong sustainability y for understanding socio-technical transitions and business model changes towards sustainability. Here the focus is on companies’ dualistic role pursuing sustainable developmentSustainable development targets—both contributing to sustainability within the business dimensions, and assisting the broader systemic change through the new sustainable business models. Furthermore, the chapter deals with the external factors that either enable or hinder companies to transform their existing business models towards sustainability. By reviewing previous literature, this study develops preliminary frameworks combining the approaches of transition management, sustainable value creationSustainable value creation and corporate sustainabilityCorporate sustainability levels. The work aims to decrease the existing gap between the literature of system transitionSystem transition and business models. The frameworks can be applied in the future in analyzing new sustainable business models, value processes Sustainability Sustainable business Values Business models , value creation and capture, and broader systemic changes towards sustainability.