Product-to-service transfer
Helping companies that produce a material product to change their business to service sector.
Companies that produce some (useless) material product would be first helped to find a more sustainable business alternative - a service fitting their ideology and competence - and then they could take the insurance to transfer the business securely. This is quite close to Relevance Insurance idea.
--------------------------
Challenge - What societal challenge does it combat? Whom/what does the challenge concern? How many are they? Why is it important to combat?
Every year, more material is extracted by humans at mines, fields, rivers, etc. than earth produces. It means that all the time we are diminishing the capacity of the earth to maintain human wellbeing. Over-extraction of material is maybe the biggest barrier for long-term sustainable development. And still there are millions of companies extracting more and more material every year, producing milk-foamers, chocolate egg surprises, eye-lash benders, T-shirts, candy etc. All 6 billion people are effected by this development, mainly through global warming and the decreased ability of ecosystems to provide materials and services.
--------------------------
Value base - What are the underlying core values driving this business? What is the approach in combatting the challenge? How are the core values seen in practical functioning of the business and its decision-making?
Core value is sustainable development. Challenge would be combatted with the approach that we want to ensure long-term sustainability of both human and ecosystem wellbeing. All decisions would be made on the basis of expected environmental impacts.
--------------------------
Postive impact - What positive impact does your idea create on society and environment? How big is this impact? How many are affected by it? What creates the impact and how? Is this kind of strategy to create this impact tried before? How is your idea better than previous experiments? What indirect impacts does this direct impact induce? How is the impact going to change during the whole life-cycle of the business from the birth to market growth to stagnation to perishing of the product/service? How can it be scaled up?
--------------------------
Negative impact - What negative impact does your idea have? How big is it? How many are affected by it? How big a negative impact is created in the beginning as investment, how big an operative negative impact is created when running the business? When is the invested negative impact overrun with the created net positive impact? What indirect impacts does this direct impact induce? How is the impact going to change during the life-cycle of the business? How is the overall negative impact made smaller than the positive one?
--------------------------
Team - Who is going to start and run this business and what are going to be their roles? What are their personal motivations to do it? What makes this team good for it? What skills does this team have, what is it lacking and how is it compensating the lacking skills?
--------------------------
Markets, competition and differentiation - Who will buy, what, why and how much are they going to pay for it? How many customers are there going to be? How many customers have you already found? What competing products or services are there? What are their market share, pricing, strengths and weaknesses? How does this idea differentiate you from others in the markets? What is new in it? What is better in it? How are these markets going to change in the future? What makes the differentiation sustainable?
--------------------------
Profit prospects - What investments are needed? Where are you getting the investment from? What operating costs are there? How much revenue is expected during the whole life-cycle of the business? How is the revenue flow developing during the life-cycle?
--------------------------
Partnerships and cooperations - What is going to be done by the team and what bought from external service providers? What partners could the business have and how would both parties benefit from these partnerships? How would the societal cause benefit? What partners have you already found?
Consulting in finding the right new business and making the transfer smoothly would be done through a partnership with a consulting company.
--------------------------
Risks - What kind of risks is the business going to face? How likely are these risks? How much can they affect the societal impact and financial sustainability of the business? How are these risks mitigated?
--------------------------
How-tos - How is the market created or how is the existing market entered? How is the product/service distributed? How is it marketed?
--------------------------
Visual image - Samples of marketing materials, website etc.
