THE BUSINESS MODEL, A TOOL FOR TRANSITION TO SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION

To be consistent with sustainable innovation, production and consumption evolution, business model design needs to be reconsidered to jointly redefine the value proposition, the productive organization, the remuneration modalities and the customer relationship. This paper shows how business model design could help to manage the transition from intensive innovation toward sustainable innovation. First, we distinguish two visions of business model: a representative vision, and an interactionist vision in which the business model acts as an intermediary object. Then, we choose to adopt the interactionist vision diverting the representative canevas of business model as an intermediary object. This approach is supposed to support the co-evolution of business models and technologies leading to the design of sustainable innovation. We have tested this methodology with industrial partners in order to move toward PSS offers as sustainable innovation. Our results suggest that business model can become a privileged tool for facilitating this transition. This finding leads us to formalize a method supporting decision in order to help industrials to define their sustainable transition.