Business model innovation for smart, healthy buildings

Abstract

This paper looks at how the building industry can use the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG3) - to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages. The research investigates SDG3-driven business model innovation for healthy buildings and the role of smart technology innovation in realizing the goal’s implementation. It is based on an organizational ethnography of the VELUX Group and interviews from four business model innovation cases to illustrate how the industry can use SDG3 to create more sustainable and healthy buildings. The research finds that whereas SDG3 highlights the significance of human factors in the building industry, smart technologies support value creation based on formerly unmeasurable qualitative aspects like indoor health. Further, challenges to SDG3-based business model innovation underscore the need for expanded cross-sector collaboration in order to establish markets for the resultant smart, healthy building solutions. Public-private partnership for the smart and healthy renovation of public schools is identified as a promising way to stimulate wider market adoption.