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A future-oriented and sustainable "Leasing Society" is based on a combination of new and innovative serviceoriented business models, changed product and material ownership structures, increased and improved eco-design efforts, and reverse logistic structures. Together these elements have the potential to change the relationship between producers and consumers, and thereby create a new incentive structure in the economy regarding the use and re-use of resources. While the consumer in a leasing society buys a service (instead of a product), the producer in a leasing society retains the ownership of the product (instead of selling it) and sells the service of using the product. This creates producer incentives to re-use, remanufacture, and recycle products and materials and could become a cornerstone of the circular economy, depending on how the leasing society is implemented. While a predominantly positive picture of the success of a leasing society model and related business cases emerges from the bigger part of the available literature, this paper argues that the resource efficiency of respective business cases is highly dependent on the specific business case design. This paper develops a more cautious and differentiated definition of the leasing society by discussing relevant mechanisms and success factors of leasing society business cases. The leasing society is discussed from a micro business-oriented and a macro environment-oriented perspective complemented by a discussion of conditions for successful business models that reduce environmental impacts and resource footprints.
Increasing resource efficiency can potentially deliver important economic and environmental benefits. Many of these benefits are regularly foregone because the financial sector's capacity to adequately take the opportunities and risks arising from resource utilization and related climate change aspects into account has so far remained relatively undeveloped. Focusing on the case of Germany, a number of barriers to the inclusion of resource efficiency and climate change aspects into financial services' considerations are presented. Corresponding measures for improving the capacity of the financial sector to better integrate resource efficiency considerations and climate change related risks into its operating procedures are introduced. The measures encompass the areas of risk controlling, company reporting, institutional reporting requirements, as well as additional supporting measures.
There are a variety of economic and ecological benefits to increased resource efficiency. Social, institutional and technical innovations can all contribute towards efficiency increases. Companies face different hurdles in fostering such innovation. Small and medium-sized companies are subject to specific constraints that may prevent them from benefiting from innovation-induced resource efficiency improvements. Qualitative interviews were conducted among German small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and intermediaries to identify barriers for resource efficiency innovations and to elaborate a policy mix at the federal level that could help SMEs to overcome these. We found five major barriers to resource efficiency innovations in German SMEs, comprising deficits in innovation culture, inter-firm cooperation along the value chain, finance, awareness and take-up of government funds. We propose a distinct policy mix as a response to this situation. The policy mix comprises the interlocking and synergistic elements of government funding schemes, innovation agents and innovation laboratories.
Leasing society : study
(2012)
Die Studie untersucht das Potential der deutschen Forschungslandschaft für nutzerintegrierende Produkt- und Dienstleistungsinnovationen. Sie zeigt auf, dass Living Labs mit zunehmender Mensch-Technik-Interaktion eine wichtige Rolle für nachhaltige Entwicklung spielen können. Living Labs zielen auf eine frühzeitige Integration von Nutzerbedürfnissen und des Anwendungskontextes in Forschungs- und Innovationsprozesse. Sie können beispielsweise Lösungen zur Erhöhung der Akzeptanz ressourcenschonender Systemlösungen oder zur Vermeidung von negativen systemischen Auswirkungen auf den Ressourcen- und Energieverbrauch bieten.
In der Potentialstudie werden Anwendungsfelder von Living Labs identifiziert sowie Aspekte, die für die Entwicklung des Forschungs- und Innovationssystems relevant sind, untersucht. Weiterhin werden Handlungsoptionen zur Förderung transdisziplinärer Verbundprojekte und zu strukturbildenden Maßnahmen aufgezeigt. Die Studie basiert auf den Ergebnissen des Projekts "Nachhaltigkeitsinnovationen im Living Lab", welches vom Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF) gefördert wurde, und ist am Wuppertal Institut in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Fraunhofer-Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation (IAO), dem Fraunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung (ISI) sowie dem Faktor 10-Institut entstanden ist.
