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• Award for Research on Sustainable Business Models

Borderstep Senior Researcher Dr. Tobias Froese is part of an international research team that has been studying business models. The team was honored with the Journal of Business Models’ Sustainability & Societal Impact Award at the Business Model Conference 2026. The award recognizes scholarly work that makes an outstanding contribution to the understanding of sustainability and societal impact in business model research.

What factors determine sustainable business model transformations?

The title of the award-winning paper is: “Antecedents of Sustainable Business Model Transformation: Insights from a Cross-Sectional Field Study.” It examines which factors trigger and shape sustainable business model transformations in companies. The study is based on a field study involving eight German companies. The authors identify eight key influencing factors. In doing so, they demonstrate how their interaction can either promote or hinder sustainability-oriented changes in business models.

Dr. Tobias Froese contributed a chapter to the publication. Also involved in the paper was Prof. Dr. Florian Lüdeke-Freund, Research Fellow at the Borderstep Institute and Professor at ESCP Business School. The first author and presenter at the conference was Angelica Sardini from the Università Politecnica delle Marche.

Other co-authors include Dr. Florian Hofmann from the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IÖW) and Marie Hourdin from Better Media France.

New Theoretical Perspectives on the Transformation of Business Models

With this award, the international academic community recognizes a contribution that opens up new theoretical perspectives on the transformation of business models for sustainability. It provides important impetus for further research.