Industries are transforming their business strategy from a product-centred to a more service-centred nature by bundling products and services into integrated solutions. Such systems are commonly termed Product-Service Systems (PSS) and they are seen as an appealing strategy due to the possibility to augment profitability while at the same time become more sustainable. In order to articulate such strategies, proper business models are required. A business model describes the logic of the firm, the way it operates and how it creates value for its stakeholders. The scope of this work is to design a Business Model Framework (BMF) proposal for PSS under a sustainability approach, which means the involvement of several stakeholders and the consideration of the three sustainability pillars (economic, environmental and social). Afterwards, a group of supporting tools (toolkit) is given to allow companies and interested people to develop a real business model based on the BMF for PSS. The first step of the used methodology has been to do an extensive literature review on the state of the art of related concepts: sustainability, business ecosystem, PSS, business models, business model frameworks, services, value, value co-creation… Then, all these concepts have been merged to design the suitable elements for the BMF for PSS. Finally, in order to choose the most suitable tools to build the toolkit, a classification of a wide range of tools has been done with indicators and aggregated criteria. A presentation of each of the studied tools is included in the work. Even the scope of this work has been somehow a novelty, a concise and clear BMF for PSS has been designed, dealing with all the most current trends of the issues reviewed; e.g.: life-cycle thinking, sustainable value, stakeholders’ involvement, customer-centred approach… Then, in reference to the presented toolkit, it is practical and easy to use; but a need of more tools has been detected in the literature to properly develop some aspects of the BMF. Globally, the result has been satisfactory and the objectives have been properly achieved.

Outgoing