Projects

Business Models for Sustainable Industrial Systems

Business Models for Sustainable Industrial Systems is a three-year project funded by EPSRC. The project is looking to advance the research and practice on business model innovations that support industrial sustainability. The aim of the project is to develop a novel way of helping companies find and visualise opportunities for business model innovations that result in more sustainable businesses.  Agent-based modelling techniques will be applied to unravel complex behavioural characteristics and contexts that have the potential to disrupt the current business model. Please contact us if your organisation is interested in experimenting with new more sustainable business models.

Contact - Dr Doroteya Vladimirova (Lead researcher)

REDRESS

REDRESS was a collaborative project between M&S and the IfM and funded by the Innovate UK competition 'Supply Chain Innovation Towards A Circular Economy’.  It was a 2-year project to drive garment recovery and retained value through business model and supply chain innovation. This project sought to accelerate M&S Plan A commitments around reducing waste. The focus for this project was to significantly reduce the environmental impact of raw materials in M&S’ clothing supply chain.  The team applied circular economy thinking and business experimentation processes to drive greater garment recovery and retained value. The outcomes of the project can be applied to textile and other industries. The project aimed to improve the overall sustainability of UK and Global manufacturing through the development of tools and methods to help reduce sustainability performance variation between factories and help elevate (future) factory sustainability performance.

Contact - Dr Curie Park (Lead researcher)

PhD Projects

Business models for the secondary use of electric vehicle batteries

Batteries retired from electric vehicles (EVs) still have enough capacity for further applications such as low-speed vehicle traction and stationary energy storage. This research takes a multi-stakeholder’s perspective and explores business models for the post-vehicle applications of EV batteries.  The second-life batteries have the potential to link the transport and energy sector and generates new stakeholders.

Contact - Na Jiao

A capability study for business model and eco-efficiency for enterprise transformation

This research explores to identify the capabilities needed for better integration and implementation of business model innovation and eco-efficiency. An instruction tool aims to develop to help industry explore and analysis a good solution of their enterprise transformation.

Contact - Yan Li 

Sustainable business models to improve nutrition and health: A study into the collaboration between the food and health care sectors This research aims to improve our understanding of an emerging phenomenon—increasing integration of food and health care actors. The expected outcome is a framework clarifying the alignment of incentives among actors, which will contribute knowledge regarding how and why they work together to create business models supporting healthy nutrition.

Contact - Kirsten Van Fossen

Sustainable value creation for product-service systems (PSS) This research seeks to help manufacturers identify opportunities for sustainable value creation. A Sustainable Value Analysis Tool (SVAT) has been developed to analyse value uncaptured throughout the product life cycle and to identify value opportunities. The tool has been validated and used in workshops for various purposes, including research, consultancy, business education and university education.

Contact - Doroteya Vladimirova