The original idea of the Sustainable Dance Club (SDC) was to provide the club circuit with a broad portfolio of advanced sustainable products and services, making dance clubs a lighthouse of sustainable innovation in Dutch society. The product idea was that forces exerted on the floor could be converted into electricity through an electromechanical energy generator and stored in another medium or immediately used by other equipment. Although the ambition of the firm was initially to sell these flux floors to clubs, the clubbing market did not take off and the business model transformed into a rental scheme for events and other organizations. Since the beginning of 2011, Sustainable Dance Club has been developing a new application, called Sustainable Energy Floor (SEF). SEF is designed as a large-scale application for public spaces where a large volume of people walk, such as stadiums, airports, and shopping centres. The floors are also now used as renewable energy demonstrators at consumer oriented conference presentations and road shows of green energy suppliers and distributors, aimed at getting attention of the public in order to increase their market share. The technology used in SEF is the same as SDC however design considerations and market contexts are different.
Example of strategy 2D:
Facilitate the Use of Modern Business Models
Policy makers and implementers can also act as supportive agents and intermediaries of modern business models in different contexts. Two approaches should be mentioned here, the more generic effectuation model approach, and since islands in comparison to the mainland are usually isolated when it comes to the fast availability of various resources, the Bricolage model.
Figure 3 – Effectuation Model
Sarasvathy (2008) and Keskin (2015) argue that for successful start-up innovation, standard-marketing approaches are less relevant. They argue that instead, the understanding of the behaviour of “expert entrepreneurs” is crucial, as illustrated via a special framework of the Effectuation Model. This model includes four main “effectuation principles” which are essential for the explanation of entrepreneurial decision-making logic in uncertain situations.
Birds in hand
- The process starts with means (not specific goals).
- A certain dream or motivating perspective is leading: what do I want to achieve?
- Ask yourself these 4 questions: Who am I? What do I know? What are my potentials? Whom do I know?
Affordable Loss
- Don’t take big risks.
- How much loss can I afford (instead of asking: how much will I gain)?
Crazy Quilt
- Partnership is crucial, with self-selected stakeholders who make real commitments.
- Sharing risks.
Lemonade
- Aim to exploit unexpected contingencies.
- Make lemonade out of it.
As the PhD dissertation of Keskin indicates, most of the activities and managerial decision-making steps for the SDC development follow an effectuation approach, including a role for the effectuation principles, rather than the standard rational-marketing approach. In close connection, local and regional governments should observe their partners in industry and the start-ups they cooperate with from a modern perspective. They should be active in bringing in and following Effectuation Model insights, including their own observations and insights in the field of “opportunistic” entrepreneurial behaviour. In this way, as active intermediaries, governments can also play an important role in the diffusion of new business insights in their region or municipality.
Bricolage Model
In an emerging island economy context, innovation approaches like described by Jin (2015), such as “Bricolage” -an adaptive approach creatively using scarcely available means- can be quite relevant. Bricolage is a process that is linked to observation and assessment of resources available in the environment, and then taking a preference for using “whatever is at hand”, rather than searching for new resources.
Island governments can stimulate creative Bricolage through workshops with challenging goals like: “do more with less”, “keep the island in our own hands”, “-virtually- cut the infrastructure lines with the mainland”, and by building on the collective memory.
For a good example of Bricolage see: The use of straw for the distributed heating system on Samsoe Island – Samsoe Energy Academy energiakademiet.dk
