Lower the threshold

About sustainability, business models and goats-wool-socks

Sustainability is a hot topic, the image of the goats-wool-sock-thingy is something of the past. If you go out and ask people, everyone wants to be sustainable, as long as it doesn’t take more effort or is much more expensive.
That’s a little bit the problem, people are luxury-animals, if we’re used to comfort we can’t live without it and only want more.
Sustainable initiatives are in most cases more expensive than the regular alternatives. Think of the cool Tesla and the ‘normal’ car you could get for the same amount. In the end the sustainable alternative is cheaper but for ‘now’ the entry costs are just a large threshold for people.

Entrepreneurs are motivated, creative people with a will to always find the solution. Difficult situations therefore will lead to pure innovation: The problem? Too high price for the customer; the solution? Other ways of earning money. Simple in essence, genius in execution.
This lowers the threshold, and makes the sustainable alternative more accessible for people. Some time ago an initiative started with solar panels, where the customer only paid a little for the difference between the energy savings and the regular energy costs. Or the Dutch initiative Lease-a-Jeans where you don’t own the trousers but just lease and return them after use (with a circular economy as side benefit). Or the new trend of ‘sharing is the new owning’, where people share cars (Snappcar) or equipment (Peerby). All these business models have in common that you only pay for what you need.
The big question is, are these business models sustainable in the way that they will exist over a longer period of time? Or will we go towards transaction-based-business models (the simple buyer-seller-model).

As an example of ‘sharing is the new owning’, the library founded to satisfy people’s needs to read, so people could simply borrow books instead of having to buy them right away. Despite the ‘sharing is the new owning’-trend, libraries are kind of getting extinct. Possibly because ordering via webshop is less effort, it is nice to have your own book, you’d rather control your own reading pace (comfort)?
These new business models are certainly sustainable from the idea’s perspective, making sustainable ideas more accessible. The question remains whether these genius new business models are sustainable from a time perspective. But, knowing entrepreneurs, this will hardly give any trouble since entrepreneurs will certainly come with new ideas for future business models.