Fundación Inteligentemente Feliz (Foundation Intelligently Happy) was established in 2017 with the aim of providing assistance to post-war victims in Colombia. The Foundation created a health services program titled 21 Days of Change (21 dias de cambio) that offers psychological assistance to victims and provides them with an app or a notebook with a printed guide. Currently, the Foundation’s main customers are Columbian government offices that support mental health services for around 3,000 women living in rural areas of Colombia. The case focuses on the process of establishing the company and its business model. More specifically, it illustrates how the founders are using the lean start-up approach and its methods to better understand the needs of user groups and align to the Foundation’s mission and goals. The case also illustrates how the activities of this social enterprise are aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

GodEl is a Swedish electricity retailer owned by a non-profit foundation that provides 100 percent renewable and environmentally certified electricity to its customers. Established in 2005 GodEl, has no private profit motive and it donates its revenues to non-governmental organizations. This case shows the role of social enterprises and business model innovation over time, driven by sustainability issues. The case further illustrates practices that lead to changes in the dominant business model of an industry while providing background on the Scandinavian electricity retail market.

Farm-based biogas production is a promising renewable energy technology with the potential for creating sustainable economic, environmental, and social value. However, Swedish farmers engaged in this activity struggle to turn a profit because of high-investment costs and severe price competition with fossil fuels. One way to address this situation is to re-organize the activity by innovating the business model (BM) towards sustainability. In this study, a team of researchers took an action research approach that proposed solutions for the financial difficulties at a farm cooperative that intended to develop its farm-based biogas production. Two participatory workshops (including researchers, producers, students, and consultants) were conducted using the sustainable business-modelling tool called the Flourishing Business Canvas (FBC). Based on the 215 ideas developed in the workshops, five sustainable BM prototypes were created. These five prototypes form the basis of an approach for initiating the development of a network-level BM for sustainability that highlights its superiority over a single-firm BM. The network-level BM’s main advantage in the farm-based biogas context is its strong focus on stakeholder collaboration that supports the development of a stakeholder business case for sustainability. Overall, this study highlights the usefulness of the network concept in the practice of sustainable BM development. Collaborative business modelling for developing network-level BMs that address environmental and social problems for and with stakeholders can be an effective way to increase long-term financial profit and promote the growth of a firm, a network, or an industry. © 2018 The Author(s)

This article seeks to answer the question of how value proposition is created using a human- centred approach in the context of deservitization, in general, and service dilution, in particular. The article aims to describe the journey of a company which undertook service dilution and used human- centred design to create a new product- oriented value proposition. The study adopted a research through design approach in conjunction with a single case study of an engineering and manufacturing services provider that recently initiated a service dilution process. Within the framework of university- business collaboration, a design project was developed. The main insights of the study pertain to the role of human- centred design as a way of learning and surpassing the pure exploitation of existing capabilities during the service dilution process. Learning by design is also seen as a potential alternative learning process that fuels exploration during the service dilution process.