ABSTRACT
A business model is a way of doing business, perhaps closest understood as a concept for making money. A sustainable business would be a firm with the ambition to survive over time and create a successful, perhaps even profitable, entity in the long run. The reason for this apparent ambiguity around the concept of profitability is, of course, that business models apply to many different settings, not just the profit-oriented company. Verstraete and Jouison-Laffitte define the business model as a convention for value generation, value remuneration and the division of this remuneration among involved stakeholders in an entrepreneurial project. Sustainability might also be interpreted as the propensity to survive and thus also the ability to stay competitive. As such, a business model cannot be a static way of doing business. Scholars and practitioners have always provided strong implicit assumptions about the nature of performance through divergent interpretations of performance.
