Business Model Innovation: a Framework for Assessing Corporate Engagement with Sustainability

Abstract Business models and sustainability are at the heart of most company strategy. Raising environmental awareness together with worldwide ecological controversies prompted companies’ sustainability integration into their business models. The purpose of this paper is to define how sustainable are impact-driven business models, and the logical path for that will be to analyse three best-in-class companies, Patagonia, Ikea and Unilever, sitting on the podium of sustainability rankings. The methodology and approach used was a qualitative literature review based on 38 references, that supported the emergence of a new theoretical concept: the Sustainability Mirror Framework. This model was applied to the equivalent of over 250 pages of web-scrapped materials from the three companies’ websites. The main findings indicated that while a company might have an impact, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is sustainable for itself and its environment. Integrating impact into business models poses both challenges and opportunities, it emerges as pivotal in addressing contemporary challenges, but clashes with entrenched strategic imperatives, necessitating a paradigm shift. Further studies were identified such as the integration of interviews to confront the collected data with an inner-view point, as well as implementing the developed theoretical framework on a larger scale to confirm its cross-industry applicability. Addressing these themes will contribute valuable insights to academia, policymakers, and practitioners, fostering sustainable and impact-driven practices in business.