Ecological-Inclusive Business Models for Sustainable Development. A Case Study on Agro-Food Hybrid Organisations in Sub-Saharan Africa

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) proposed by the United Nations have encouraged companies to innovate their business models to achieve triplebottom-line sustainability. Among the most interesting and effective examples of sustainable business model innovation are hybrid organisations. As these organisations change the fiduciary duty and structure of the firm, they blur the distinction between the profit and non-profit logic and rely on business model innovation to pursue their mission. This study focuses on the business models of bottom-of-the-pyramid hybrid organisations, which we refer to as ecologicalinclusive, because of their inclination to produce positive environmental value while at the same time including low-income stakeholders in their value chain. The goal of this paper is to investigate how and to what extent sustainability aspects are integrated within ecological-inclusive business models, identifying possible business model archetypes. To do so, the authors applied a selective and inductive qualitative content analysis to 15 ecological-inclusive business models. By analysing and comparing the sampled business models we are able to propose two different archetypes of ecological-inclusive business models, according to the lowincome stakeholders engaged as customers: the “young sunflower” and the “adult sunflower”. These archetypes explain how bottom-of-the-pyramid hybrid organisations face the challenges posed by the context in which they operate to fulfil the quest for corporate sustainability.