CloudEARTHi´s Earth Centred Business Design (ECBD) framework tool

Small businesses are the driving force of our economy, however, the majority adopt a ‘linear business model’, which does not account for social and environmental impacts. When a founder creates a business, they often complete a business model canvas and a business plan, but these tools do not enable them to consider the impact of their proposition on carbon emissions, waste, pollution, resource consumption and other environmental and social impacts.

Businesses may revisit these issues through a sustainability strategy once they are better developed, but by this stage significant investment may already have been made to launch and growth the business in way that does not account for, or minimise, environmental and social impact. It then may be harder, and more costly, to amend established processes and to ‘retrofit’ low carbon, circular thinking to their business model.

ECBD aims to change this. It is a product and a service, formed of a series of unique exercises and a new ‘earth-centred’ business model canvas, which enables founders to think differently about how they can operate their business to build a more sustainable future. One of the key changes ECBD aims to deliver is helping businesses not only to do ‘less bad’, but also to be a driving force for good by opening up new markets, customer segments and revenue streams that benefit people and planet. As such, ECBD demonstrates a new way of operating and aims to get founders excited about the opportunities offered in the transition to a more sustainable future.

ECBD provides support in the following areas:

• Net-zero and circular operational plan
• Product development
• Revenue strategies
• Consideration of the businesses’ role in ecosystem and supply chain

The University of Edinburgh was chosen as the development lead for ECBD within the Consortium for three reasons:

• Expertise in entrepreneurship, venture building, business development within our commercialisation service (Edinburgh Innovations);
• Academic knowledge and expertise in the relevant thematic areas of circular economy, net-zero, data science and digital technology;
• A clear institutional commitment to become a net zero, circular institution across our operations, research, teaching and learning and innovation activities and practical experience of implementing this.

As a leading research and innovation hub for circular economy and climate expertise, the University of Edinburgh/Edinburgh Innovations Project Team’s focus was to increase capacity for the University partner institutions to drive low carbon, circular entrepreneurship within their innovation ecosystems through the creation and testing of ECBD. The product achieves this by offering the information, support, and advice start up need to integrate low carbon, circular economy principles into their business models at the earliest stage.

The process of developing ECBD was iterative and strongly collaborative in nature. We worked particularly closely with consortium business partner G-Force – building on their knowledge and experience of start-ups and investors alongside our own – to design the Tool. The initial product was then tested with participating start-ups before it was refined and tested further in a second round of piloting.

We will shortly be making final revisions to the product and developing a plan for scaling up use of the resource across the University, partner institutions, and the wider ecosystem of companies and entrepreneurs we support.

Description of the actions/activities taken:

Start-up companies that used the ECBD to identify opportunities to embed low carbon, circular innovation into their businesses each received an intensive programme of 1:1 support over a period of two months (either online or face to face). This hybrid approach was taken to maximise the flexibility of participating for time-poor entrepreneurs and enable us to tailor support to the needs of different companies. At the end of the process, companies were asked to confirm the actions they planned to take to implement low carbon, circular economy thinking into their business as a result of their participation in the Project.

How was the practice implemented? What does it involve? Why? When did you implement it? Briefly describe the methodological approach step-by-step so that it can be easily understood and replicated by others.

Through a combination of tools and 1:1 support, ECBD allows for the provision of tailored support for start-ups when setting up a business (irrespective of the business sector they are operating in).

Founders were recruited following a short timeframe of “open applications” for access to information and free support. We then designed a tailored programme of support for participating start-ups to suit their individual interests, needs and stage of development.

Each business received support over a two-month period, which included four 1:1 workshops sessions (2 hours per session) and ad hoc advice and support as required. Participants were required to undertake independent learning and reflection during the period of support, which included the completion of workshops that could be reviewed during the workshops. This mix of independent and facilitated learning, help to maximize flexibility for participating companies and to ensure that the workshop sessions were as productive as possible.

Activities of the ECBD framework are organised as follow:

• Introduction​
  • Circular Economy and Net Zero concepts​
• Identify your Unique Selling point (UPS)​
  • Problem Identification​
  • Value proposition​
  • Customer Blueprint ​
• Vision for the future ​
  • Net-Zero Cashflow​
  • Identifying & Visualisation of key areas of importance​
  • Material flow mapping​
• Brainstorm your business strategy​
  • Circular Business model strategies​
  • Questions and answers​
• Strategic pathways​
  • Earth Centred Business Design Canvas​
  • Action plan and timeline​

Outcomes have been identified across several areas from the development and testing of the Tool to date. Participating start ups:

• Carbon emissions – have set targets across four key business areas (environmental, social, finance and political) and intend to monitor progress;
• Finance –intend to undertake research to ensure financial partners are sustainable, switching banks if they are not;
• Supply chain – may take actions to improve the transparency of their supply chains, if relevant;
• Scale and impact – intend to deliver sustainability training workshops to customers, if relevant;
• Material and product – intend to undertake material flow analysis, if relevant, to reduce material intensity and waste, and enable repair and reuse;

Resilience – intent to improve sustainability of their operations to increase resilience in business planning focusing on stimulating local suppliers.