Together with European Telecommunication, Railway and Energy companies we are contributing to the sustainability-oriented development of the emerging 5G telecomunnication ecosystem. As part of the 5G Victori Project we are facilitating a workshop series to understand complementary value creation throughout the ecosystem, the distribution of stakeholders and roles in different deployment environments (e.g. railways and smart cities), and potentials to enhance ecological, social and economic value creation e.g. considering sustainable business model design patterns such as pay-for-success or green freemium.
One essential challenge here is to find viable paths to deal with the complexity of different business model components or activities, different types of (economic, social and ecological) value creation, and different stakeholders including ecosystem partners being involved, without running into an overwhelming complexity. We are developing a methodology that integrates sustainability orientation consistently in each of the steps and that ensures that sustainable value creation is baked in ecosystem development from the outset. Useful resources are already available, including the EU Taxonomy of sustainable business activities, our own taxonomy of business model design patterns accounting for economic, social and ecological value creation, and practically proven tools to model sustainable business, and a generic process model developed and applied for 5G vertical business ideas in the 5G Victori project.