In the quest to reduce the environmental burden of our industrial production and mass consumption society, we begin to focus our attention on current business models. For the past 20 years, researchers have been pointing to systems’ innovation. Bringing both ideas together in business model innovation is thought to be the most promising transformation that can bring capitalism into a circular economy.

In the 2012 report by Nordic Innovation, they studied a sample of twenty-nine cases of business models with environmental benefits. Of these, 100% know that their business model generates environmental improvements, yet only 6 of the 29 have calculated how much compared to traditional business models.

More importantly, this Scandinavian study of green business models exposes 8 types of models, divided into two categories. The first category describes models where a company incentivises its consumers in a way so that part or the entire value chain is…