Redesigning businesses

Seven participants from diverse industries attended the Doughnut Design for Business workshop at the beginning of September: software, education, food production, and lighting. 

There was a world traveller, a startup, a 100-year-old family business and three SMEs.

Participants valued the diversity of perspectives, and breakthrough ideas came from interactive discussions. They also appreciated that we were two co-facilitators and the dynamics it created.

• Make service accessible to deaf people.
• Sell customized products 
• Diversify our offering to avoid dependence on a degenerative sector
• Relocate production to France
• Reuse materials from end-of-life products recovered from our customers (creating a circular economy loop)
• Local sourcing
• Participative governance with employees
• Create a national network of partners to act locally and reduce travels 
• Create an open-source platform 
  
  

Examples of the current design of the businesses that block and enable such ideas.

• Profit-driven Board of Directors
• Top-down governance
• The mentalities and worldview of the management team challenging to change
• Performance indicators that focus solely on profit maximization and the financial dimension.

Examples of ideas for business redesign and how these could enable transformative ideas.

• No margin for developing countries
• Define and adopt new indicators (social and environmental) to complement financial and market share indicators.

Challenges and insights that emerged in exploring transformative ideas and business redesign.

• Train employees on the Doughnut and organize in-house workshops
• Set up new indicators
• Raise awareness internally with Rapid Doughnut Mapping

Ways the tool can evolve to better support businesses on the business redesign journey.

• One-day in-company workshop 
• More group reflections
• Include stakeholders 
• Provide additional content on innovations about the five layers (examples and new models).

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