The 21st century’s rapidly compounding crises – from climate and ecological breakdown to extreme social inequities of power and opportunity – make it irrefutably clear that the global economic system must be transformed if humanity and the rest of life on Earth are to thrive. Doughnut Economics provides an increasingly recognised compass for such a thriving future, and is focused on meeting the needs of all people within the means of the living planet, by creating economies that are regenerative and distributive by design. What are the implications for the role and transformation of business, if it is to be part of this future?This paper explores how the deep design of business – through a company’s Purpose, Networks, Governance, Ownership, and Finance – powerfully shapesits strategic decisions and operational impacts, and ultimately determines whether or not businesses can transform to become part of a regenerative and distributive future. By diving into five layers of deep design, this paper reveals both design blockages that prevent transformative action, and design innovations that can unlock its possibility. In addition, this paper recognises that industry-level and system-wide transformations are crucial for turning the inheritance of a degenerative and divisive economic system into the beginnings of a regenerative and distributive one.
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Scholars in sustainable consumption increasingly highlight the limitations of “weak sustainable consumption” approaches to overcome the challenges of the current environmental crisis. While efforts to enable cleaner production and circular flows of materials are necessary and important, progress in environmental efficiency tends to deviate attention away from a more critical challenge: advancing sufficiency. In order to deliver “absolute” improvements, reducing production and consumption levels (an explicit focus on “strong sustainable consumption”) is needed. However, international and national environmental policies tend to avoid such measures. The literature points out that resistance from businesses and citizens and fear of losing geopolitical power or income from consumption taxes are major obstacles for such policies to emerge. In this context, this paper examines the case of the “Amsterdam Doughnut”, the measures aimed at reducing consumption of electronics, textiles and furniture included in the “Amsterdam Circular 2020-2025 Strategy”, and the relation to product lifetimes. Interviews with key actors involved in the integration of Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economy model into the city strategy were conducted, and official documents were reviewed. The paper discusses to what extent these efforts can be characterized as a “strong sustainable consumption” policy, and aspects that may have helped to overcome the resistance mentioned above, contributing to ongoing debate about the implementation of sufficiency principles.
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The Collaborative Innovation and Entrepreneurship professorship focuses on the collaborative paradigm in economic transformation - the ways diverse organizations in globalvalue chains innovate and act in partnerships to address ecological and social grand challenges. Collaboration with multiple and diverse stakeholders is complex and challenging. Stakeholders have different interests, may compete with each other, or are just not ready to move as fast or as radically as others. Yet, we know that grand challenges are too complex and systemic for any one organization to address alone. Business leaders have an important role to play in transforming economic ecosystems and catalysing change among stakeholders and industry actors. They must move from linear thinking, where sustainability is a market for green or social products, to circular and inclusive thinking, where regeneration of natural ecosystems occurs and economic profits are equally distributed.The Collaborative Innovation and Entrepreneurship professorship aims to contribute knowledge, support organizations, and facilitate learning about collaborative organizational forms and practices - what we call collaborative organizing - for a more sustainable, regenerative and thriving 21st century economic system.
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In 2017, renowned Prof Kate Raworth from Oxford University and Amsterdam University introduced Doughnut Economics, an economic model to enable humans to thrive within the planetary boundaries and resources. Several private and public actors, including the city of Amsterdam, adopted the model in their circular economy development's strategies. Doughnut-Architecture aims to develop further the AREA (Atelier for Resilient Environmental Architecture) Framework, a tool designed by graduating students Charlotte Uiterwaal, Isabella van der Griend, Ryan McGaffney, Karolina Bäckman, at the faculty of Architecture, Delft University of Technology (TU-Delft), under the supervision of Henri van Bennekom. AREA-Framework support architects to intervene in the built environment taking as a reference the Doughnut Economics model. The AREA-Framework is at an initial stage, and its categories and subcategories are only qualitative. TU-Delft, the architectural practices Space&Matter and SuperuseStudios, in collaboration with the interdepartmental research group Circular Built Environment Hub (CBEH) and architectural practices from the network of 400 construction companies belonging to the Ex'tax project, the advice from Kate Raworth and the Amsterdam-Donut-Coalitie will further develop the AREA-Framework primarily quantitatively and also qualitatively. TU-Delft, Space&Matter, SuperuseStudios, other architectural practices from the Ex'tax-network will test the framework on different phases of real projects, interdepartmental research and education. The ultimate goal is to develop the framework further, to increase the number of architectural practices successfully implementing the Doughnut Economics in the built environment at a national level. The framework will contribute to positioning the architectural practices concerning Doughnut Economics and the Circular Economy. The project results are firstly an online open-access publication about the further developed Framework to be applied by architects; secondly, the preparation and submission of a follow-up research proposal about the extended development and implementation of the Framework applicable to the built environment by all the Ex'tax construction sector companies.
