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2019-02-12 - #077

Context-Based Design - A Business Model Architecture for an Innovation Centre In the Energy Transition

This month our speaker is recent grad student Eric Fath-Kolmes.  He completed his MBA at the Hanze University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands in 2018.  In his talk to us this month Eric will be introducing his graduate thesis work which he undertook at the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), and specifically with their Hybrid Energy Systems Integration facility(HESI).

HESI enables "companies to test innovations aimed at making intelligent and flexible energy systems a reality" to accelerate the transition from fossil to renewable sources".  Eric's research responded to a direct need of TNO HESI: What approaches and tools can be most useful for our technology innovators to design business models for the next generation hybrid energy systems they are developing?

Fath-Kolmes, E. (2018). Context-Based Design – A Business Model Architecture for an Innovation Centre in the Energy Transition (Masters). Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen.

You can download a copy of Eric's full thesis from: www.researchgate.net/publication/326649251

Eric joined the Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group in 2017, and in the same year became a First Explorer licensee of the Flourishing Business Canvas.  Since fall 2018 he is Program/Project Manager and First Explorer Community Animator for the Flourishing Enterprise Innovation Toolkit project: this was the first, and is one of 6 major projects of this group's members (see list of projects on left side of this wiki)

So we are delighted that this month that Eric will review his research and practical experiences in this critical area of research and practice to enable strongly sustainable business model design and outcomes.

As usual, we are meeting on the 2nd Tuesday of the month
  • Date: Tuesday, Feb 12th 2019 
  • Time: 90 minutes starting  13h30 PST / 16h30 EST / 21h30 GMT / 22h30 CET / 05h30 JST (+1 day)

To join the meeting please see the virtual logistics posted to our LinkedIn Group in this post.

The slides presented plus a link to the unedited recording of this meeting has been made available via our GoogleDrive in the folder for this months meeting. 

Anyone who joins the LinkedIn forum is considered a member of this group and is welcome to join at the meeting

https://drive.google.com/open?id=10cq2mV7WjXU5CfgbfVeSOilzGHwb5prx


To introduce his talk, Eric cites the Abstract from his research:

This research contributes to the development of business model architectures that are responsive to the needs of organisations focused on innovation for the energy transition, which is essential for sustainability. It expands research on considering context in developing architectures and their guidance. Currently there is no business model architecture specifically designed for an innovation centre in the energy transition. The objective of this research was to explore a new business model architecture for an organisation in this context. Due to the worldwide need for sustainability, this research considered existing sustainable business model architectures as potential foundations for this context-based architecture. The research used a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews. Interviews were conducted with experts in the energy transition and in business models. The findings from the interviews identified the elements of context, the components and applicable guidance, and the interrelationships between these components that were a fit with this context. The research concluded that the Flourishing Business Canvas provides a good foundation for a business model architecture that can be adapted for the context. Values, as introduced by the Business Innovation Kit, is added as a component. Using this structure, the thesis provides an architecture with context-specific adaptations and guidance. Innovation centres in similar contexts could use this as a precedent and use significant parts of these recommendations in their own context-based architectures. This research provides an example of how context-sensitive adaptations and guidance can make business model architectures more useful to organisations and companies in their various contexts focused on sustainability. Future research could explore architectures and their guidance as related to other contexts.


The link to the recording of the meeting is posted as a comment to the Linkedin Post about this meeting, along with on-going discussion about the meeting by our members.  A copy of the recording is stored in the GoogleDrive folder for this months meeting.

Attendance list is updated at the event to record attendance (if a location is not provided participant was F2F in Toronto)

  • Eric Fath-Kolmes, Flourishing Enterprise Innovation Toolkit, Program/Project Manager and First Explorer Community Animator, Edmonton AB
  • Antony Upward, SSBMG Co-founder, Convener Flourishing Enterprise Innovation Toolkit Project, Adjunct Prof. OCAD University Faculty of Design, Adjunct Prof. Halmstad University Department of Innovation Management, Toronto ON
  • Nicole Norris, SSBMG Community Animator, OCADU MDes SFI Student/Georgian College, Centre for Changemaking and Social Innovation, Barrie ON
  • Kathy Porter, SSBMG Community Animator, OCADU MDes SFI Student, Toronto ON
  • Simon Robinson, Holonomics Education, São Paulo
  • Jennifer Wilson-Lee, OCADU MDes SFI Student / Humber College, Toronto ON
  • Gil Friend, CEO Natural Logic Inc, founder Critical Path Capital
  • Andrew Simpson, Principal Consultant Ecotone Software Consulting, Toronto
  • Sayeh Dastgheib-Beheshti, Industrial designer, SAYEH.ca, Toronto ON
  • Ondine Hogeboom, Co-founder Lean4Flourishing, Montreal
  • Frederick Peters, City Institute at York University, Toronto.
  • Douglas Worts, Worldviews Consulting, Toronto ON
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