Green and sustainable business models: historical roots, growth trajectory, conceptual architecture and an agenda for future research—A bibliometric review of green and sustainable business models | S

We adopted the methodological workflow of Zupic and Cater (2015) to address our research questions. Table 1 illustrates this workflow.

Table 1 Methodology workflow

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Research design and selection of techniques to address RQs

To address the first RQ, we used reference publication year spectroscopy (RPYS) introduced by Marx et al. (2014). RPYS is a bibliometric technique widely used to ‘determine the historical roots of research fields and quantify their impact on current research’. (Marx et al., 2014, p. 751).

To address the second RQ, we used life cycle analysis (LCA) (Meyer et al., 1999). Ernst (1997) and Rezaeian et al. (2017) argue that scientific evolution over time represents an S-shaped curve similar to an industry life cycle where, if the current stage of a scientific field or technology is already known, it would be possible to forecast its future trends and growth trajectory.

To address the third RQ, we employed co-word analysis (CWA) (Callon et al., 1983), CWA assumes that ‘when words frequently co-occur in documents, it means that the concepts behind those words are closely related’ (Zupic & Cater, 2015). CWA maps the pertinent literature directly from the interactions of key terms instead of the interactions of citations (Coulter et al., 1998). CWA is the primary technique to explore and build the underlying conceptual structure of a scientific field (Zupic & Cater, 2015).

Compilation of bibliometric data

Bibliometric data are available at multiple debases such as Scopus, Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Sconce,Footnote 4 Google Scholar, and Microsoft Academics (see Harzing & Alakangas, 2017 for a comparison). For the purpose of this study, we used Scopus for three reasons. First, Scopus is the largest scientific database and has a better coverage of journals than other databases (Martín-Martín et al., 2018; Zupic & Cater, 2015). Second, Scopus is more accurate than other databases (Franceschini et al., 2016). Finally, unlike other databases, Scopus contains data for all authors in cited references, making interpretation and discussion of findings easier and more accurate (Zupic & Cater, 2015).

After selecting the database, we followed the method used by Chabowski et al. (2013) to identify the relevant terms for retrieving publications from the database. Accordingly, we reviewed literature on GnSBMs and developed an initial list of terms. Then, we asked three experts to review and finalize the list. Next, we used the list in Scopus to retrieve all relevant publications. The initial search resulted in 1297 records. We scanned the records’ abstracts, titles and keywords and identified and removed 188 irrelevant records. We also removed 28 notes, erratum and editorials. Next, we filtered by subject area to business, management, accounting, economics and social sciences (N = 938). Finally, we excluded all non-English records (N = 67) and removed duplicates (N = 18). The final dataset included 851 unique (deduplicated) records.Footnote 5

Analysis and visualization of results

Data cleaning and pre-processing

Data cleaning, disambiguation and preparation constitute a key prerequisite for accurate bibliometric data analysis (Zupic & Cater, 2015). Consistent with Castriotta et al. (2018), we carefully checked the data for duplicate records (N = 18), incomplete and erroneous authors’ names (N = 56 records were identified and corrected), synonymous, plurals and misspelled keywords (N = 145 keywords were corrected), incorrect cited references (338 cited referenced were identified and 330 were corrected and 8 removed) and incomplete journal names (N = 25 incorrect journal names were corrected). This process took 3 weeks and was carried out in three steps.Footnote 6 First, we used normalizing functions of BibExcel to normalize names of authors and journals (Persson et al., 2009). Then, we created a thesaurus to consolidate plural words, words appearing in different forms and same words with different spellings (e.g. model with models, organization and organisation, Business Modelling with Business Modelling) (Eck & Waltman, 2020). Next, we disambiguated the dataset for incorrect journal names and cited references (CR), using the disambiguation function of CRExplorer which detects variants of the same CR, clusters them and merges their occurrences (number of CRs) (Thor et al., 2018). The final output file was then saved for processing.

Exploring the historical roots of research on GnSBMs using RPYS

We employed Cited References Explorer (CRExplorer) package developed by Thor et al. (2018) to perform RPYS analysis. CRExplorer creates a graph based on the frequency of citations of the cited references (CRs) over timeFootnote 7 with the year of publication of a cited reference on the x-axis and the total number of citations to the cited reference on the y-axis (Fig. 1). The spectrogram visualizes peaks which can be interpreted as important dates for the publication of possible influential historical contributionsFootnote 8 (Bornmann et al., 2018).

Fig. 1

Reference publication year spectroscopy of research on GnSBM

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Influential historical contributions which were illustrated in Fig. 1 have been listed in Table 2. We did not impose any citation threshold to select peaks. Our intention was to offer a complete picture of all significant contributions in the history of research on GnSBMs. Therefore, we illustrated all peaks in the history. CRExplorer identified ten peaks.Footnote 9 We reviewed these peaks and grouped them into five types in terms of their primary contribution: (1) sustainability contributions which offered conceptual breakthroughs for sustainable and green business models, (2) methodological contributions which offered methodological breakthroughs for researchers, (3) theoretical contributions which offered formal theories to help researchers structure their research, (4) BM contributions which illustrated the application of the BM concept in the context of sustainability and (5) integrative contributions which paved the way for future research by integrating different aspects of research on GnSBMs.

Table 2 Historical roots of research on GnSBM

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In addition, we used the export function of the CRExplorer to extract ‘sleeping beauties’ in the field of GnSBMs. A sleeping beauty is a publication ‘that goes unnoticed (“sleeps”) for a long time and then, almost suddenly, attracts a lot of attention (“is awakened by a prince”)’ (Van Raan, 2004, p. 461).Footnote 10 Sleeping beauties represent important contributions and often paradigmatic innovations in the history of a scientific field owing to being ahead of their times (Fang, 2018; Li & Ye, 2016). The search for sleeping beauties is not just an exotic whim, but a necessity to answer key questions about the historical evolution of a field (van Rann, 2004). CRExplorer unearthed 13 sleeping beauties in the history of research on GnSBMs (Table 2). These 13 publications represent historical milestones with delayed recognitions. Not only do these publications mesh with the same typology of historical peaks as discussed before, but they also provide complementary rather than supplementary insights into the historical evolution of research on GnSBMs. As such, these publications, when taken together, paint an interesting portrait of the key historical contributions to the growth of research on GnSBMs. In what follows, we review these publications.

Historical peaks in the evolution of research on GnSBMs

Silent Spring by Carson (1962) represents the first peak. Carlson eloquently reported the harmful side effects of pesticides on the environment. Her work has been repeatedly cited in research on GnSBMs as a seminal work that stresses the need for greening BMs. Freeman’s (1984) book on stakeholder management shapes the second peak in the history of research on GnSBMs. The stakeholder theory raised awareness about the significance of including all stakeholders in business decision-making, and contended that BMs must include interests of different stakeholders. Similarly, the ‘common future’ by the World Commission on Environment and Development urged nations to arrive at a universal agenda for business sustainability. The first three peaks marked by these contributions, each one in its own way, revolutionized rules, regulations and mentalities that define how BMs ought to be designed and implemented in a green and sustainable manner.

Prevalence of exploratory research methods aimed at developing new theories from case studies is a key characteristic of a young research field (Edmondson & McManus, 2007). It is not surprising to find that Eisenhardt’s (1989) work on developing theories from case studies is the only methodological peak in the history of research on GnSBMs.

As noted, a BM defines how a business uses its resources and capabilities to create, deliver and capture value (Teece, 2010). Therefore, a theory for organizational resources is needed to understand how GnSBMs actually work. Barney’s (1991) work on the resource-based theory of the firm offered such an understanding and expectedly represents the fifth peak in the history of research on GnSBMs. The sixth peak belongs to Hart’s (1995) work on a natural resource-based view of the firm. Building on Barney’s (1991) seminal work, Hart argued that if resources were used in pollution prevention, product stewardship and sustainable development, they would create sustainable competitive advantage.

The next two peaks are specifically about the BM concept. Chesbrough and Rosenbloom (2002) argued that every new technology and venture needs a BM to succeed. New green and sustainable technologies need specific BMs to succeed, and this is a principle in the genesis of GnSBMs. Relatedly, Teece (2010) argued that every business venture has a BM. This BM forms the micro-donation of how it operates and evolves over time. Arguably, every green and sustainable idea must be incorporated into a BM before it enters the market.

The last two peaks are integrative contributions. Boons and Lüdeke-Freund (2013) offered a normative view of research on GnSBMs by arguing that research on sustainable innovations must incorporate BM concept into its agenda. Bocken et al. (2016) synthesized research on product design for circular BMs.

Exploring the historical roots of research on GnSBMs implies that it is a multidisciplinary field that is evolving towards an interdisciplinary one. This movement can be explained from two different but closely related perspectives: epistemological and bibliometrical.Footnote 11 From an epistemological view, Jovanovic and Schinckus (2013) argue that in a multidisciplinary field ‘several disciplines are in association for the purpose of analysing a common object with their own theories, models and concepts’ (p. 167). The bibliometircal view focuses on the voice of authors and a holistic view of the field. For instance, Wagner et al. (2011) describe a multidisciplinary field as a field in which authors ‘speak as separate voices, in encyclopedic alignment, an ad hoc mix, or a mélange’ (p. 16). A unifying angle between two perspectives is their focus on the absence of a disciplinary synergy. In both perspectives, multidisciplinary research is just sum of the disciplinary contributions without a clear integration. As shown, ecological roots (e.g. Brundtland, 1987; Carson, 1962) and organizational roots (e.g. Barney, 1991; Freeman, 1984; Hart, 1995) have advanced separately in their own disciplines to shape the early foundation of knowledge on GnSBMs.

In an interdisciplinary field, researchers from different disciplines ‘have common roles and they try to arrive at integration and synthesis of the disciplines involved by developing a common methodology, models and theories’ (Jovanovic & Schinckus, 2013, p. 167). The bibliometrical view of an interdisciplinary domain offers a similar portrait. ‘It integrates separate disciplinary data, methods, tools, concepts and theories in order to create a holistic view or common understanding of a complex issue, question, or problem’ (Wagner et al., 2011, p. 16). The last two peaks in the historical foundation of GnSBMs research denote the formation of an interdisciplinary domain where ‘disciplinary knowledge, concepts and tools of investigation are considered and combined in such way that the resulting understanding is greater than the sum of its disciplinary parts’ (Jovanovic & Schinckus, 2013, p. 167), and offers a larger, more holistic understanding of the core problem or question (Wagner et al., 2011).

Further, existence of only nine peaks and recency of integrative contributions indicate that research on GnSBMs is in its formative stage and has not reached its full potential yet. The life cycle analysis substantiates this observation.

Sleeping beauties in the history of research on GnSBMs

As noted, sleeping beauties are a specific type of historical publication which go through an initial period of little or no recognition and then receive remarkable recognitions. As such, sleeping beauties often contain unpresented significance which takes time to attract scholarly attention (van Rann, 2004).

The first sleeping beauty in the field of research on GnSBMs is the methodological study of Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007) which builds on an earlier study of Eisenhardt (1989) on developing theories from case studies. Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007) enumerate challenges in using case studies and offer several practical solutions to translate challenges into opportunities. This publication is a sleeping beauty because earlier work on GnSBMs often used single case studies as descriptive and illustrative tools rather than theory-building ones. As research on GnSBMs grow in relevance and popularity, the need to develop theories based on multiple case studies strengthened, resulting in a sudden appreciation of the recommendations outlined by Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007). This reasoning can also explain the sudden awakening of another sleeping beauty: Yin (2014) on case research. Yin (2014) provides a comprehensive explanation for case study as a scientific research methodology in this seminal work.

The next sleeping beauty is the study of Richardson (2008), who portrays business model as a framework for strategy execution. Richardson (2008) argues that a business model can help to think strategically about the details of the way a firm does business. Thus, it can be used to execute strategies. This view of business model as a strategic rather than commercial or operational tool was novel and unprecedented at the time, and was later substantiated and expanded in the works of Teece (2010), Zott and Amit (2010) and Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010), all of which are among the sleeping beauties we identified. Teece (2010), as described earlier, offered novel insights into the connection between BM and strategy from a capability view, whereas Zott and Amit (2010) conceptualized business models as activity systems. Osterwalder and Pigneur (2010) proposed business model canvas as a conceptual took to describe, visualise, assess and change business models. The contribution of these studies was to the general domain of business model because they paved the way for future work on GnSBMs by helping researchers look at sustainable practices through a wider business model lens.

The study of Stubbs and Cocklin (2008) represents another sleeping beauty. It uses two descriptive case studies to demonstrate that a sustainable business model requires a mix of both structural and cultural capabilities to enable organizational wide collaboration with all stakeholders in an organization’s ecosystem. This contribution is an integrative one because it brings sustainability into the domain of business model design. There are at least two reasons why this study is a sleeping beauty. First, Stubbs and Cocklin’s (2008) account of organizational sustainability in the intersection of structural and cultural capabilities was unprecedented in the field. Second, it conceptualizes an organization’s business model as a managerial paradigm that challenges the neoclassical economic view of the firm as a productive entity. Although this view served the purpose of the research, it was different from the dominant view of BM as the time which was primarily about the logic of value creation in an organization (Chesbrough & Rosenbloom, 2002).

Similarly, Lüdeke-Freund (2010) used the concept of business model as a coherent set of meta factors that defines how individual value, value equity (i.e. appropriated value) and public value (i.e. externalities) can be integrated to support sustainable production and consumption. The work of Lüdeke-Freund (2010) was integrative because it conceptually synthesized business model and sustainable production and consumption. However, it received delayed recognition for doing so because its conceptualization of business model as the logic of value creation and its classification of value into individual value, value equity and public value were unorthodox at the time and took a while to enter the mainstream value-based research on GnSBMs.

Rashid et al. (2013) presented the concept of Resource Conservative Manufacturing (ResCoM) as a paradigmatic shift on how the prevailing open-loop manufacturing system can be transformed into a closed-loop one. Although these authors did not specifically discuss business model concept, their study proposes a novel way to create sustainable value. Consequently, we classified it as an integrative sleeping beauty. Being a conceptual study aimed at proposing a new sophisticated manufacturing system based on conservation of energy, material and value added with waste prevention and environment protection could explain why this study didn’t receive instant recognition.

The last three sleeping beauties addressed key issues about circular and shared economy by offering novel views which were ahead of their time. As such, we classified their contribution as generic to the domain of sustainability. Su et al. (2013), reviewed national policies on the implementation of circular economy in China and offered an overview of underlying problems and challenges as well as practical recommendations. The initial economic growth of China by relying on fossil fuels and adopting traditional unsustainable manufacturing systems before its modernization in recent years could explain why this article did not attract early attention. Analogously, Belk (2014) reviewed the tenets of sharing economy and argue that a post-ownership economy driven by sharing and collaborative consumptions will overtake the existing ownership-based economy.

Lastly, Tukker (2015) addressed a vexing issue at the time; the slow adoption of product service systems (PSS) in the context of circular economies. Tukker’s review of research suggested that for consumers, having control over things, artefacts and behavioural freedom are very important. However, PSSs are often less accessible or have less tangible value than the competing products. Tukker’s study did not receive early recognition because of the nascency of research on both PSSs and circular economy BMs. As research on GnSBMs expanded, the importance of methods to increase popularity and adoption of PSSs rose, resulting in a refreshed interest in studies such as Tukker’s.

As noted, peaks in RPYS and sleeping beauties highlighted a number of key historical themes, such as generic theories of sustainability and early conceptualizations of business models, as well as more specific research on the architecture of sustainable business models and challenges of shared and circular economies. These developments on their own, albeit informative, do not show the growth trajectory of research on GnSBMs over its life cycle. We address this issue in the next section.

Drawing the growth trajectory and life cycle of research on GnSBMs

The life cycle of a scientific field is characterized by four distinctive phases: introduction, growth, maturity and saturation (Ernst, 1997; Rezaeian et al., 2017). In the introduction phase we witness a little growth in the number of publications, while in the growth phase, the number of publications increases exponentially. The maturity phase shows signs of decline in the number of publications until the saturation stage is reached, in which only a limited growth with few new publications can be expected. However, ‘saturation level does not mark an end but rather advancements into a new level; that is to say, the growth period can still be extended, if there are new breakthrough innovations in this area’ (Zanjirchi et al., 2019, p. 1299). This curve can be modelled via Eq. 1 (Meyer et al., 1999).

$$N\left(t\right)=\frac{K}{1+\text{exp}[-\frac{\text{ln}\left(81\right)}{\Delta t}\left(t-tm\right)]},$$

(1)

where K is the asymptotic limit that the growth curve approaches and shows the saturation level of growth, Δt is the characteristic duration that specifies the time required for a trajectory to grow from 10 to 90% of the limit K, and tm is the midpoint of the growth trajectory (Meyer et al., 1999). To estimate these parameters, it is customary to transform the logistic curve into a straight line using the Fisher-Pry Transform (Meyer et al., 1999) as shown in Eq. 2:

$$FP\left(t\right)=\left(\frac{F\left(t\right)}{1-F\left(t\right)}\right),$$

(2)

$$\text{where}\, F\left(t\right)=\frac{N(t)}{k}.$$

We used LogletLab 4.0 (Yung et al., 1999) to perform LCA. Consistent with Postnikov (2020), we used a Monte Carlo simulation with 10,000 iterations and confidence interval of 95%. Estimated parameters are presented in Table 3.

Table 3 Results growth curve on GnSBM

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Figure 2 illustrates the life cycle of research on GnSBMs. It suggests that research on GnSBMs went through an introductory period from 2002 to 2013 and reached its 10% point in 2014, when it commenced a period of scientific growth which is expected to continue until 2040 with over 2542 publications (Fig. 2A). The growth period can still be extended if there are new breakthrough innovations in this area. Thus, this extrapolation indicates a clear potential for further developments in this field.

Fig. 2

Growth curves of research on GnSBM

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Publications of influential integrative works such as Boons and Lüdeke-Freund (2013) explain why the year 2014 marks the start of a new period characterized with an accelerated growth in research on GnSBMs. This acceleration is expected to increase until 2022 when the field enters its maturity phase (Fig. 2C), when growth will slow down. The Fisher-Pry transformation in Fig. 2B supports this growth curve and suggests that the field is expected to grow from 10 to 90% in 17 years (2014–2031).

We carried out a sensitivity analysis by comparing the actual numbers of publications with the predicted numbers to assess the accuracy of the predictions in the growth curve. The results as shown in Fig. 3 indicate a considerably high level of accuracy of the predictions in the results of growth curve analysis.

Fig. 3

Sensitivity analysis of predicted growth of research on GnSBM

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We conclude that research on GnSBMs has, so far, gone through two phases of its life cycle. We consider the year 2014 as a point when the field moved from an introductory stage into a growth stage (Fig. 2A). Informed by this observation, we performed two rounds of CWA to assess the conceptual structure of research in each stage (2002–2013 & 2014–2020).

Mapping the conceptual structure of research on GnSBMs

CWA extracts ‘the themes of science and detect the linkages among these themes directly from the subject content of texts. It does not rely on any a priori definition of research themes in science’ (He, 1999, p. 138); therefore, it allows an objective and unbiased assessment of publications in a field and dynamics of relationships between its keywords (Callon et al., 1983, 1991).

To perform CWA, researchers can use either title words or author keywords. We used author keywords because it creates results which are ‘substantially more detailed than that created by title word analysis’ (He, 1999, p. 154). Title words are also less representative of an article’s content (Zhang et al., 2016). The Bibliometrix package in R (available at http://www.bibliometrix.org) via its Biblioshiny GUI (Aria & Cuccurullo, 2017) was used to perform this analysis. We followed the method outlined by Callon et al. (1991) and He (1999) to draw strategic diagrams for clusters of themes emerged from CWA. Appendix explains this procedure.

A strategic diagram as demonstrated in Fig. 4 presents a conceptual structure based on a classification of themes in relation to their centrality and density scores.Footnote 12 This classification allows us to detect established and emerging themes in a research field for a specific period of time (Callon et al., 1991). We accordingly created two strategic diagrams, one for 2002–2013 and one for 2014–2020, and reviewed relevant literature in each phase.

Fig. 4

Quadrants in a strategic diagram

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A strategic diagram for research from 2002 to 2013

Figure 5 exhibits the strategic diagram for the period between 2002 and 2013. In quadrant one we have three themes: (1) corporate social responsibility (CSR), (2) BM concept and (3) telemedicine. CSR represents the biggest theme in this quadrant. It is a central concept in the literature on business sustainability (Barry, 2003; Kleine & von Hauff, 2009), and has been associated with other concepts such as triple bottom line (Birkin et al., 2009) and corporate environmental reporting (Carvalho, 2010; Duran-Encalada & Paucar-Caceres, 2012). CSR is embedded in every GnSBM because, according to the Commission of the European Communities (CEC), ‘CSR is a fundamental concept whereby companies integrate social and environmental concerns into their business operations and in their interactions with their stakeholders on a voluntary basis’ (CEC, 2001, p. 5). Research in this phase demonstrates how organizations such as Petrobras (Carvalho, 2010), Marks & Spencer (Barry, 2003), Lee Zen (Chang et al., 2011), Pemex (Duran-Encalada & Paucar-Caceres, 2012) and Unilever (Polman, 2013) have adjusted their BMs to embrace CSR.

The BM concept was a central and developed theme in this phase because it offered researchers an umbrella concept to explain various sustainable business activities such as sustainable furniture manufacturing (Høgevold, 2003), eco-friendly fashion design and production (Štrukelj, 2010), design of better product recovery and recycling systems (Rahimifard et al., 2009), adoption of e-governance in rural areas (Naik, 2011), management of textile waste (Savageau, 2011), manufacturing and distributing of improved biomass stoves to underprivileged families (Shrimali et al., 2011), design of better e-health systems (Mettler & Eurich, 2012) and development of sustainable product-service ecosystems (Resta, 2010) through the lens of BM.

Compared with CSR and BM concept, telemedicine is a smaller theme with less centrality and a lower degree of density. Telemedicine refers to the application of ICT in BMs which offers healthcare and medical services remotely through a phone line (Barry, 2003; Bell, 2013; Chang et al., 2011; Duran-Encalada & Paucar-Caceres, 2012; Kleine & von Hauff, 2009; Ramesh, 2010). The centrality of this theme can be attributed to its focus on novel BMs that leverage ICT to expand healthcare services internationally (Pak et al., 2008). Telemedicine is also central to e-health ecosystems which use different BMs to promote an active and healthy ageing around the world (Dimitrova, 2013). Additionally, transforming medical and health records into an electronic format lies at the heart of healthcare reforms which are often embodied in GnSBMs (Abraham et al., 2011; Adler-Milstein et al., 2013).

Moving on to the second quadrant, service quality and information processing and security were two themes in this phase. Service quality is a quintessential factor in the success of GnSBMs which use PSSs. Consumers prefer flexible, reliable and personalized services when assessing advantages of PSSs over traditional BMs (Beuren et al., 2013). Uncertainty about service quality explains why consumers might be distrustful of PSSs (Catulli, 2012). Continuous improvement of service quality is, thus, germane to the competitiveness of such GnSBMs (Schweitzer et al., 2010).

Information security and processing are essential factors in the success of every GnSBM which works with users’ personal information. For instance, Gomes et al., (2010) identified information security as a key barrier in the implementation of BMs that generate universal broadband access in developing regions. Similarly, lack of infrastructure to ensure trust, information security and information accuracy has been a concern for the success of GnSBMs in the public health sector (Anthony et al., 2013; Dowling et al., 2010).

The third quadrant contains ‘energy poverty’ and ‘education’. Energy poverty concerns BMs such as solar panel initiatives that enable access to the electricity grid for more than 1.5 billion people (Myers, 2013b). Associated terms with this theme include ‘rural electrification’, ‘economics of power networks’ and ‘cheap energy’, predominantly in the developing world (Myers, 2013a, 2013b).

The presence of ‘education’ in this quadrant can be explained from two perspectives. First, several studies have argued that educating students about GnSBMs in fields such as engineers (Shartrand et al., 2010) and nursing (Capezuti et al., 2013) facilitates global sustainable development. Second, BMs such as open educational resources (de Langen, 2013), mobile learning services (Maske et al., 2011) and affordable higher education loans (Ramachandran & Lavanya, 2012) bring higher education to the forefront of sustainable development.

Two themes, namely ‘sustainable BM’ and ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (BOP), appeared in the fourth quadrant. The former includes research on the conceptualizations of GnSBMs (e.g. Stubbs et al., 2008; Wilson & Post, 2013), social BMs which create shared value (Porter & Kramer, 2011) and rhetoric of ‘BM sustainability’ (Jenkins, 2006; Schaltegger et al., 2012). The latter encapsulates research on the design of GnSBMs for BOP (Prahalad & Hart, 2002; Myers, 2013a). Innovative BMs such as rural solar panels (Myers, 2013a), rural healthcare (Alur & Schoormans, 2011; Esposito et al., 2012), affordable education and sanitation (Prahalad, 2005) and rural banking (Mohan & Potnis, 2010) are among GnSBMs which have been successfully launched at BOP.

A strategic diagram for research from 2014 to 2020

The strategic diagram for research on GnSBM published between 2014 and 2020 is illustrated in Fig. 6.

The thematic structure of the second stage is consistent with the findings of the life cycle and the RPYS analyses. As a young field in its formative phase, we did not observe any central and developed theme in the first quadrant. In contrast, there are two peripheral and developed themes in the second quadrant. The first is the ‘supply chain’, which captures two streams: (1) the role of GnSBMs in sustainable supply chains (Dubey et al., 2015; Geissdoerfer et al., 2018a, 2018b) or socially responsible supply chains (Eriksson & Svensson, 2015; Wit & Pylak, 2020) and (2) the role played by GnSBMs in disrupting traditional supply chains (Chun, 2020; García-Muiña et al., 2020; Massaro et al., 2020; Melkonyan & Krumme, 2019; Nosratabadi et al., 2019a, 2019b; Pal & Gander, 2018; Papahristou & Bilalis, 2017; Rajesh Karthik & Millath, 2019; Tiscini et al., 2020; Zufall et al., 2020).

The second theme is the ‘sustainable innovation’ which is an umbrella theme related to how innovative BMs drive economic transition towards sustainability (Geissdoerfer et al., 2018a, 2018b). It encompasses topics such as collaboration mechanisms between different GnSBMs (Reficco et al., 2018), eco-innovations (Al-Saleh & Mahroum, 2015; Barbieri & Santos, 2020; Bocken et al., 2014; Li & Evans, 2019) and social entrepreneurship (Dentchev et al., 2018; Mongelli et al., 2017). Additionally, this theme included research on BMs for greener infrastructural projects (Haavaldsen et al., 2014), sustainable sources of energy (Nair & Paulose, 2014), BMs for eco-tourism (Naramski & Herman, 2020), BMs which reuse and recycle products in innovative ways (Reinhardt et al., 2020; Xue et al., 2019) and new BMs to manage plastic waste (Dijkstra et al., 2020).

Two themes populated the third quadrant: ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) and ‘cloud computing’ (CC). These two are complementary technologies in Industry 4.0 and numerous opportunities for developing GnSBMs arise when these two are integrated in a ‘cloud of things’ model (Aazam et al., 2016; Lardo et al., 2020; Stergiou et al., 2018).

IoT enables everyday objects to communicate with one another over the internet to achieve some useful objectives (Whitmore et al., 2015). In the context of GnSBMs, IoT can convert linear BMs into circular ones (Ingemarsdotter et al., 2019), improve urban resource recycling (Xue et al., 2019), facilitate redistributed manufacturing systems (Turner, et al., 2019) and enable sharing economy BMs (Gao & Li, 2020).

Cloud computing (CC) refers to an ‘ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of computing resources that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction’ (Chun, 2020, p. 50). Applications of CC in GnSBMs are vast. For instance, CC improves cost and energy efficiency in big data environments (Rehman et al., 2016), enables better management of resources in high traffic networks (Kunsemoller et al., 2017), reduces cost and energy consumption of manufacturing systems (Fisher et al., 2018) and facilitates ICT provision in different sectors such as higher education (Tao et al., 2015).

Quadrant four is represented by three themes: ‘circular economy’, ‘sharing economy’ and ‘blockchain’. Circular economy is the most prominent theme for two reasons. First, transition to circularity is a key area of research in GnSBMs (Hofmann, 2019; Leipold & Petit-Boix, 2018; Meissner et al., 2020; Mishra et al., 2020; Scheepens et al., 2016). Second, circular BMs are versatile (Baldassarre et al., 2019; Cong et al., 2019) and can be linked to sharing economy (Bocken et al., 2020; Ciulli & Kolk, 2019; Curtis & Mont, 2020), PSS (Barquet et al., 2016a, 2016b; Ingemarsdotter et al., 2019), resource efficiency (Hofmann, 2019; Martens, 2007; Rizos et al., 2016; Yang & Evans, 2019) and Industry 4.0 (Bodkhe et al., 2020; García-Muiña et al., 2020; Rajesh Karthik & Millath, 2019; Strandhagen et al., 2017).

Moving on to the sharing economy, sharing BMs are used to rent, share, lend, sell or exchange shareable goods on the basis of the premise of liberty, democracy, social justice and environmental justice (Martin, 2016). Although sharing BMs promote a more sustainable consumption regime (Geissinger et al., 2019), they also bring about paradoxical challenges such as creating unregulated marketplace, decreasing consumer trust, disturbing labour market, increasing reliance on technology and advocating social exclusivity (only those who own a shareable asset can join the network) (Frenken et al., 2017; Laurell et al., 2019; Martin, 2016; Plewnia & Guenther, 2018). Such paradoxes and ambiguities surrounding sharing BMs and their actual costs and benefits could explain why this is a central yet underdeveloped theme in the research on GnSBMs.

Lastly, blockchain (BC) is a decentralized ledger system which records all forms of transactions while guaranteeing security, anonymity and data integrity without any external actor in charge of controlling transactions (Tiscini et al., 2020; Yli-Huumo et al., 2016). According to Tiscini et al. (2020), the main feature in BC technology is that ‘no record or data can be overwritten, and every transaction is certified in time through a timestamp’ (p. 1624). As such, BC technology improves trust and fosters inclusivity by allowing widespread distribution of the benefits of a BM to the community involved (Massaro et al., 2020). Owing to these benefits, BC has become a central theme in the research on various GnSBMs agri-food (Tiscini et al., 2020), finance (Zamani & Giaglis, 2018), higher education (Turkanovic et al., 2018) and public health (Roehrs et al., 2017).