The presentation made at the final exam for my Masters of Environmental Studies in Business Model Design and Sustainability + Graduate Diploma in Business and the Environment at York University's Faculty of Environmental Studies and Schulich School of Business.

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© Antony Upward, 2013
Key Learnings Concerning
Business Model Design and
Sustainability§
MES* / Business + Environment Diploma Final Exam
August 6, 2013
Antony Upward†
, CMC, C.Eng‡
§ Requesting change to Area of Concentration at Exam – Title of AoC in Plan of Study examined in MES II-III exam May 27, 2011 was Business Process Design and
Sustainability
* York University Masters of Environmental Studies with Graduate Diploma in Business and the Environment
Faculty of Environmental Studies and Schulich School of Business
† Full resume at www.linkedin.com/in/antonyupward
‡ Certified Management Consultant www.cmc-canada.ca, Chartered Information Systems Engineer www.engc.org.uk

2. 2© Antony Upward, 2013
Components of Area of
Concentration
1. Sustainability Outcomes
2. Design Process
3. Design Patterns and Archetypes
4. Research Theory and Methodology

3. 3© Antony Upward, 2013
1. Sustainability Outcomes
• Course work / term-papers etc.
• ES/ENVS5100, 5164, 5113, 5150, 6191, 6115, 6103
• Participation in Systems Thinking Seminar (Prof. Bunch)
• 90+ Entry Bibliography
• Field Experience
• Consulting at NGO, Industry Association Sustainability Special Interest
Group development, Research Assistantship Health & Safety Project @
Schulich, Natural Step Canada Sustainability Leadership Bootcamp,
Sustainability Learning Centre Life Cycle Analysis Course, Natural Step
Conference, Business Alliance for Local Living Economies Conference
• Thesis
• Literature reviews
Key Learning:
• Sustainability is an inherently paradoxical inter-disciplinary concept: the
intersection of ever changing state of nature and our ever changing state of mind
(Summarized from Allen, Tainter, Hoekstra, 2003)
• A strongly sustainable organization is one in which all of its behaviours and all the
behaviours of all other relevant social, economic and biophysical actors, lead to
the possibility that human and other life will flourish on the planet forever. (Derived
from Ehrenfeld, 2008)

4. 4© Antony Upward, 2013
2. Design Process
• Course work
• ENVS 5113, 5150, 6191, 6103, SB/OMIS7000
• Informal design independent study
• 60+ entry bibliography
• Field Work
• Design with Dialogue practitioner research/community, Natural Step Canada
Sustainability Leadership, Bootcamp, Bio-inspired Design
research/practitioner community
• Thesis
• Undertaking design of Strongly Sustainable Business Model Ontology and
Canvas
Key Learning:
• Design is an abductive mode of thinking – “what could be” – hence inherently
normative
• Unlike induction and deduction, design can empathetically accommodate
normative ideas while creating useful artefacts and credentialed knowledge.
• Good design should leverage existing descriptive science truths, but may still
usefully proceed in the absence of such truths.

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3. Business Model Design Patterns
and Archetypes
• Course work
• EN/ENVS 5100, 5113, 5150, 6191, 6115, 6103, SB/OMIS7000
• Field work
• Consulting at NGO, Industry Association Sustainability Special Interest
Group development, Natural Step Canada Sustainability Leadership
Bootcamp, Natural Step Conference, Business Alliance for Local Living
Economies Conference
• Thesis
• Developing entities and entity relationship model to describe the Strongly
Sustainable Business Model Ontology
• Developing instantiations / example of Strongly Sustainable Business Model
Ontology to describe existing firms business models
Key Learning:
• Many business model patterns / archetypes are thought to enable (strongly)
sustainable outcomes
e.g. servicisation, closed-loop, biomimetic, cradle-to-cradle, dematerialization, localist, social-entreprenurship, etc.
• However little work has been done to
a) identify common elements of these patterns
b) show why such patterns can reliably lead to strongly sustainable outcomes

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4. Research Methods
• Course work
• ES/ENVS 5100, 6193, SB/OMIS7000
• Institute for Social Research (3 courses)
• Field Research
• Design with Dialogue practitioner research/community, Research
Assistantship Health & Safety Project @ Schulich
• Thesis
• Systemic Design Science methodological development, including reviews of
design science and systems research methods literature
Key Learning:
• Inter-disciplinary systems oriented research, that takes a critical pragmatic stance
vis-a-vie positivist and/or subjectivist world-views, is vital to resolving / improving
the Global Problématique*, but large barriers remain to its widespread adoption
• Systems oriented design thinking and research is also critical: much of what we
need currently doesn’t exist to be studied by descriptive science and / or
inherently includes a necessary normative element
* Ozbekhan, 1970

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Communication of
Learning & Research
• Webinars, seminars, lectures given globally since start of 2012.
– SlideShare, Prezi, Facebook etc.
• Thesis
– Will be posted on York Open Space (creative commons license) http://hdl.handle.net/10315/20777
– Planned popular book: Strongly Sustainable Business Model Innovation, crowd-funded, collaborative self-
published with 10 co-contributors, 2014.
• Term papers
– Posted to SlideShare
• Blog Posts
– OCADU sLab http://slab.ocad.ca/blogs/antony-upward
– Company http://blog.EdwardJames.biz
– Personal http://blog.AntonyUpward.name
• Draft articles (looking for co-authors)
– “Improving Evaluation in Design Science” (Profs. Jones and MacRae)
– “Defining Organizational Sustainability” (Dobson)
– “Design Science to the Rescue: Knowledge Production for the Sustainable Organization”
– “How Firms Will React to Limits on Bio-Physical Flows: An Exploration of Possibilities”
• Book chapter
– “Emergent OrganizationAL Forms” in Multiplying the Benefits – Editors Easterbrook, Savan (2014)
• Book review with McDougall and Hoeller
– “The Nature of Business: Redesigning for Reslilience”, Giles Hutchins, Zygote Quarterly #2, 2012

8. 8© Antony Upward, 2013
Overall Reflection
• Good education leads to shifts in the students
world-view
• An intellectually challenging, demanding, multi-
faceted but enjoyable journey
• Realization that perhaps I can help to start to
make a small difference
Our collective ability to sustain each of us and all of us, now and in the future,
depends on our ability to innovate in response to our new and changed
circumstances. This is particularly true, as we enter fully into the anthroprocene,
where these circumstances are the unintended consequences of our own individual
and collective behaviour.
Its what you do next that counts — Jamie Reagan, repeating advice from his
Grandfather, from the TV Series “Blue Bloods”
(From conclusion of my thesis, Chapter 12)

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Discussion

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© Antony Upward, 2013
Backup Slides

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Plans for Practitioner Toolkit
• 46 International members of
OCADU Strategic Innovation Lab
Strongly Sustainable Business Model Group (SSBMG)
• 10 International “First Explorers”
using SSBMCanvas now
– Further feedback accumulating
• Planning for not your typical
business “book” underway
– 10 International co-contributors
identified
– Self Publish, 2014
– Crowd-Funded
• Individuals & Organizations
• Sufficient Funding Gate ~Fall 2013
• “app”
– Design Tool
– Business Learning Game
• Community Revenue Opportunities via
– Training Service “Toolkit”
– Consulting Service “Toolkit”
– Education / Classroom “Toolkit”
– Sustainability Entrepreneur’s “Toolkit”
– Industry Specific “Toolkits”
– Sustainability Maturity Level Specific
“Toolkits”
• Full alignment with emerging “
Gold Standard” for Strongly Sustainable
Business
– Measurement “Toolkit”
• Best Practices & More Case Studies
Now Next
Join Us! http://survey.SSBMG.com/

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Possible Table of Contents for “Book”

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www.SSBMG.com
• About the Strongly Sustainable Business
Model Canvas ~
3 minute Audio Visual Overview
• Survey to give input to book
– survey.SSBMG.com
• Mailing List sign-up
– signup.SSBMG.com
• Learning / Knowledge
– wiki.SSBMG.com/home/learning-map
• Blogs
– blog.SSBMG.com
– slab.ocad.ca/blogs/antony-upward
http://www.facebook.com/StronglySustainableB
@aupward #SSBMG
info (at) SSBMG.com
blog.SSBMG.com
Mailing List sign-up
signup.SSBMG.com

15. 15© Antony Upward, 2013
Thesis
• Preferred citation for my thesis work is:
– Upward, A. (2013). Towards an Ontology and Canvas for Strongly Sustainable
Business Models: A Systemic Design Science Exploration. (Masters of
Environmental Studies / Graduate Diploma in Business + Environment, York
University, Faculty of Environmental Studies and Schulich School of Business),
1-891 (i-xx). (http://hdl.handle.net/10315/20777)
– Electronic copy will be available at this handle/DOI after Aug 30, 2013
• All citations in this presentation may be found in the Bibliography of the
thesis.