The characteristics and evolution of business model for green buildings: a bibliometric approach

Abstract

PurposeThe wide uptake of green building is hindered by factors such as limited market demand and high up-front cost despite substantial policy incentives. Successful business models (BMs) help facilitate the diffusion of sustainable innovation and have attracted increasing attention. However, little attention has been paid to examining the adoption of green building from the perspective of BM. This paper aims to identify the characteristics of BM that companies adopted to deliver green building projects and examine the evolution path of BM for green buildings.Design/methodology/approachA total of 744 interdisciplinary bibliographic records related to BM and green buildings from the Web of Science Core Collection database have been identified from the Web of Science Core Collection and analyzed through co-author analysis, co-word analysis and co-citation analysis.FindingsBM research mainly focuses on five subjects, namely, environmental science, engineering, business, economics, science and technology. Keywords “strategy”, “capability”, “perspective” and “design” receive the highest centrality index, which suggests that the strategy design and corporate capability are indispensable elements when designing or innovating a company's BM. “BM canvas” and “resource based view” received the burst citations in the recent decade. Twelve research clusters are identified, including performance evaluation, waste management, energy efficiency, BM, project business, professional capital, leadership and product innovation. These topics highlight three evolution direction for green building projects, i.e. life cycle-oriented value proposition, collaborative value delivery and innovative cost and revenue structure.Originality/valueThe findings contribute to a systematic understanding of the underlying mechanisms of BM for green buildings and illuminate the development trend of business strategies for sustainability.

Exploring the Nexus of Eco-Innovation and Sustainable Development: A Bibliometric Review and Analysis

“…Chen J. studied the effect of licensing on product and process sustainable innovation [28]. Zhao X. explored green building adoption using a successful business model, which helps in diffusion of sustainable innovation [29]. Bocken N. focused his work on incorporating eco-innovation in the production of consumer goods [30][31][32].…”

Integration of Smart Cities and Building Information Modeling (BIM) for a Sustainability Oriented Business Model to Address Sustainable Development Goals

“…• SDG 8.2-Diversifying, innovating, and upgrading economic productivity Table 4 displays studies on the use of the business model in the field of BIM and smart city integration, which are directly related to SDG 8.2. Starting in the year 2013, pertinent studies have used case studies [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55], literature reviews [15,30,[56][57][58][59][60][61], mixed studies [62,63], bibliometric analyses [16], and interviews [64] as their research approaches, concentrating on the topic of business model innovation in various contexts and fields. In general, innovations in the context of smart cities provide fresh insights to explain conventional business models and expose the factors that convert productivity from novel technology to elements of effective sources of economic benefits.…”

“…Digital skills are associated with business models to deliver sustained profit growth to the market with the use of information modeling [15]. In addition, related studies have explored how to improve economic productivity levels through the circular economy for green process innovation and the integration of information architecture and business models [53,58,61].…”

“…This also enables managers to commercialize cutting-edge technology in the market. Additionally, business models can expand the scope of systemic innovation and act as a source of competitive advantage to foster long-term innovation [61]. Many studies have suggested that the digital transformation of socio-technical systems is vital for productivity innovation and upgrading, with the ultimate goal of creating value co-creation.…”

Mapping the Landscape of the Business Model and Open Innovation Scientific Field to Set Proposals for Directions of Future Research

“…The identified bibliometric studies performed so far in the extensive scientific field of the business model research have encompassed general and more specific analyses focused on the business model [3,41,42], business model innovation [43,44], sustainable business model [45][46][47][48][49], business models for sustainability [50,51], sustainable business model innovation [52,53], sustainable business models for innovation [54], circular economy business models [55], marketing business model [56], business models and marketing [57], business model for industrial marketing [58], business models and Industry 4.0 [59,60], business models and digitalization [61], digitalization and new technologies for sustainable business models [62], digitalization-driven retail business model innovation [63], business models in supply chains [64], business models for green buildings [65], innovative business models for vertical farm entrepreneurs [66], business models and air transport [67], business models and electric cars [68], and business models, service relationships and technology [69].…”