Expand by Christian Bason

Author:Christian Bason
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637740743
Publisher: BenBella Books
Published: 2022-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

EXPANDING TO VALUE-CREATING NETWORKS

Just as we need to accept the idea that circularity isn’t a silver bullet, so too should we expand the view that circularity is an endpoint. There is, after all, a slew of potential business models and platforms, including circular ones. If we were to expand circularity, what would it look like? What comes after circularity? What might the next paradigm be?

One answer is that having expanded our thinking about economic models to consider circularity as a better alternative to linearity—and one that reconsiders how we create value—we now need to stretch even further and conceive of value creation as something that is created within systems or networks.

Instructive in this respect is the recent thinking of academics Rafael Ramírez and Ulf Mannervik, of Oxford University’s Saïd Business School, who build on the work of strategic thinker Richard Normann. From the 1980s to the 2000s, he developed an original approach to strategy that sees value as inherently coproduced in systems—an approach that stood in contrast to the then-dominant notion of competitive advantage.

Ramírez and Mannervik believe businesses can redesign their products or services by changing their roles in the wider value-creating system of which they are a part. In Strategy for a Networked World, they make the case for visualizing the wider system in which a firm or organization creates value and for mapping all the relationships and value exchanges in that system.

They also take a broader view of value than a purely financial one. Their conception includes dimensions such as knowledge, trust, and brand. This thus expands our understanding of the contributions that current or new offerings can make to a system, and becomes a way to innovate the offerings provided, or even the positioning of the organization in the system in which it wishes to provide value.

Indeed, a key to the success of the circular model are wider networks and sharing platforms that allow companies to squeeze additional value out of their products. Instead of owning something, we share it and rent it out on an as-needed basis—baby clothes for as long as they fit our newborn, say, or a car for as long as we need it to drive to the store and back. For example, Furlenco is an Indian online furniture platform that allows customers to lease its products—and swap items whenever they move to a new house or simply get tired of them. What’s more, it might become more relevant to ask how much a product costs per year of ownership regardless of whether you own it or are leasing or some other way sharing it.

In short, we call on designers, businesses, and leaders alike to expand their understanding of circularity and embrace this broader, more holistic view of what value is and how it’s created. As Ramírez and Mannervik show, organizations can choose to go beyond simply embracing circularity and instead build new value-creating systems. This necessarily represents a more fundamental, more holistic way of thinking about value, but ultimately an even more relevant and expansive one.

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