Values lie at the heart of business models. Think of value proposition (what is the value offered to the customer?), Value delivery (in what way is value delivered to the customer?) or value capture (how is value generated for the organization?). To be able to provide products/services or ideas to the markets, organizations rely on many stakeholders. Together these stakeholders form a business ecosystem which allows each of them to exist and possibly develop depending on various factors involved. These can be for instance micro factors related to the organization itself such as the financial capacity of the organization to develop new products, macro factors such as the economy or infrastructure of a given country or meso factors related to the markets they are part of (i.e. competitiveness in the automobile market). Organizations need resources to operate (i.e. raw materials such as iron ore for manufacturing metal). As the world population increases more natural resources are needed however there are insufficient resources available. From a linear economy perspective based on a “ take, make, waste” principle we need to move towards a circular economy whereby resources are maximized and recycled in some ways leading to near zero waste.   

In this transition phase from a linear to a circular economy perspective, organizations are under pressure to adapt their business models in order to have a chance to survive in their ecosystem, think of legal pressure to reduce CO2 emissions. In this context, drone applications can offer interesting opportunities to contribute to a circular economy. For instance drones can be used in infrastructure to inspect bridges to identify possible defects in a systematic fashion without the human risks normally involved in this operation. Drones can also help identify urgent needs like for example during the winter storm Uri (13-17 Feb 2021) in the city of Salem (Oregon, USA) where they were used to map the damage and help prioritize emergency services needed (link).   

As drones will play an increasing role in the future, the main questions are:

• What are present and future drone applications?
• What are their value to an organization?
• How will these new values impact their existing ecosystem and business models?
• To what extent will these changes contribute to a circular economy?
• And finally what tooling or framework would enable organizations to understand where they can be useful?

These questions form the basis of my PhD research as part of the research line “ Business Models for a circular economy” of the Saxion Business Model research group.

If you would like to contribute or know more, please contact me at t.j.m.tartarin@saxion.nl or call on 0031 612479021. Let’s change the world together :)