Enabling sustainable business models: Solving the mismatch between public policies and company needs
Sponsored by the Hamrin Foundation
01
External enablers of sustainable business models
Integrating event system theory with external enablement, we argue that event characteristics and venture resources combine configurationally, with different recipes operating as ventures are triggered and shaped. We test these ideas with a longitudinal fsQCA of 2,572 venture-year observations from 1,074 energy ventures founded between 1995 and 2024, linking country-year event indicators to firm resources and computational text analysis. Across stages, we identify multiple equifinal pathways. High event strength is sufficient in several solutions, yet sustainability orientation can also emerge when event strength is absent and technological resources substitute in the startup stage. Event space acts as both complement and substitute. Bounded space allows strong events to enable sustainability orientation even with weak internal resources, whereas expansive space co-occurs with configurations in which ventures mobilize capital. We find no evidence that gradual onset substitutes for weak events. Together, these results contribute by reframing events as configurations with event strength as an anchoring property and theorizing external enablement as set-relational event–venture fit shaped by resource substitution and complementarity across opacity and agency intensity.
02
Collective efforts and external enablement of sustainable business models
This study focuses on how collective action groups evolve over time and enable sustainability-oriented entrepreneurial initiatives.
A large-scale dataset has been constructed based on the Reddit community r/ClimateOffensive, which represents a collective action group focused on climate change mitigation. The dataset currently contains more than 400,000 posts and comments covering approximately seven years of discussions. Initial data preparation and exploratory analyses have been conducted to examine the evolution of discussions, interaction structures, and the emergence of solution-oriented conversations. A first manuscript draft based on these analyses is currently under development.
03
Building a bridge between research, practice and policy
We have advanced in developing a practitioner’s tool based on the External Enablement of Entrepreneurship Framework. During the first half of 2025, we developed design principles for the tool, and in the second half of the year, we iteratively developed and pre-tested prototypes with a design studio in Jönköping (Bolt) and entrepreneurs and business developers at Science Park Jönköping. Scholars at the Norwegian University of Technology and the University of Queensland, Australia, also participated in the project.