TY - JOUR

T1 - Developing sustainable business experimentation capability – A case study

AU - Weissbrod, Ilka

AU - Bocken, Nancy M.P.

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2016 The Authors

PY - 2017/1/20

Y1 - 2017/1/20

N2 - This research paper shows how a firm pursues innovation activities for economic, social and environmental value creation in the context of time sensitivity. We make a conceptual link between lean startup thinking, triple bottom line value creation, and organizational capabilities. The case study firm uses a novel experimentation approach to pursue the goal of diverting all of its sold clothing from landfill through a two-year project. This requires substantial changes to the current business practice because in 2012, the clothing retailer recovered 1% of all garments sold. The fibre input value for all garments sold in 2012 exceeded $7m. We found that despite a stated need for fast learning through project experiments, the experiments were not executed quickly. (1) The desire to plan project activities and the lack of lean startup approach expertise across the whole project team hampered fast action. This led to the extension of the project timeline. However, project team confidence about learning by doing increased through privately executed experiments. (2) Some project experiments were not fit to meet the triple bottom value creation project goal and were dropped from the project. Overall, the corporate mindset of economic value creation still dominated.

AB - This research paper shows how a firm pursues innovation activities for economic, social and environmental value creation in the context of time sensitivity. We make a conceptual link between lean startup thinking, triple bottom line value creation, and organizational capabilities. The case study firm uses a novel experimentation approach to pursue the goal of diverting all of its sold clothing from landfill through a two-year project. This requires substantial changes to the current business practice because in 2012, the clothing retailer recovered 1% of all garments sold. The fibre input value for all garments sold in 2012 exceeded $7m. We found that despite a stated need for fast learning through project experiments, the experiments were not executed quickly. (1) The desire to plan project activities and the lack of lean startup approach expertise across the whole project team hampered fast action. This led to the extension of the project timeline. However, project team confidence about learning by doing increased through privately executed experiments. (2) Some project experiments were not fit to meet the triple bottom value creation project goal and were dropped from the project. Overall, the corporate mindset of economic value creation still dominated.

KW - Sustainability sciences, Management & Economics

KW - Business Experimentation

KW - Sustainable Innovation

KW - Experimentation for Sustainability

KW - Experimentation

KW - Triple Bottom line value creation

KW - Urgency

KW - Circular economy

KW - Sustainable business model

KW - Business model innovation

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85006341770&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.11.009

DO - 10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.11.009

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 142

SP - 2663

EP - 2676

JO - Journal of Cleaner Production

JF - Journal of Cleaner Production

SN - 0959-6526

IS - 4

ER -