Antony Upward is co-founder of the Strongly Sustainable Business Model community (http://forum.SSBMG.com, 830 practitioner, research and student members). Founded in January 2012, the SSBMGroup is a global action research knowledge mobilization initiative hosted by the Strategic Innovation Lab of OCAD University – Canada’s leading design school and university of the imagination and culture. The focus lies on enabling Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to design, adopt and execute Strongly Sustainable, Flourishing, Thriving, Vital, Business Models. From practitioner perspective, Antony is principal and Sustainability Business Architect in flourishing enterprise design consultancy: Edward James Consulting, Ltd, where his work is focusing on business model diagnosis and design considering all three dimensions of sustainability. More information and contact: www.linkedin.com/in/antonyupward, SlideShare www.slideshare.net/antonyupward and Twitter @aupward #EJConsult.
Maurits Groen is co-founder of WakaWaka, a social enterprise producing efficient solar LED lights and chargers with the aim of generating a sustainable impact in developing countries. WakaWaka aims to ensure that people in remote and rural areas have access to the sun’s energy instead of dangerous and unhealthy kerosene lamps for lighting their homes. So far WakaWaka has reached over 1 million people in more than 50 countries. For over thirty years Maurits has been active as a consultant on sustainability policy and communication strategy, connecting people and organisations in order to work towards sustainable solutions. In 2015, Maurits Groen was awarded the title of the Netherlands’ ‘Most sustainable person of the year’ (number 1 in the Trouw Sustainable Top 100 in the Netherlands).
Jan Jonker is professor of Sustainable Entrepreneurship at the Nijmegen School of Management at Radboud University Nijmegen (The Netherlands). In his home country he has been listed for seven years in a row among the Top-100 most influential ‘Green’ Dutch people. His research focuses on transformational trends in society, the development of (new) business models and how these developments are related to organisational change and societal transition. His approach is often based on crowdthinking, which implies engaging with large groups of people in specific research projects in order to explore and possibly solve issues as a collective endeavour. As a consequence many people consider him a kind of ‘academic activist’, wanting to create change and to have impact. He did a TEDx in 2015 on the central concepts he is working, which you can see here: link. He is author of over 30 books among which the 2014 bestseller on New Business Models, now also available as an ebook in English. More and more he now focuses on a new generation of business models for the circular economy. Contact: janjonker(a)me.com
Romana Rauter is a specialist in the field of Innovation and Sustainability Management. She works as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research at University of Graz. She received her doctorate in Social and Economic Sciences with a thesis addressing the topic of inter-organisational knowledge transfer between research organisations and SMEs. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Nijmegen School of Management at the Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in 2014. Her current main research interests include open innovation, sustainable innovation, new and sustainable business models, strategic sustainability management and knowledge transfer. Contact: Romana.Rauter(a)uni-graz.at
