What does it mean for a business to step into the doughnut economics model?

The Doughnut Design for Business methodology was created as a practical application of Kate Raworth’s principles for 21st Century Economists. It uses the doughnut as a way of examining how businesses are working within planetary boundaries and supporting the social foundation.

It’s transformational potential emerges from the attention it draws to distributive approaches, shifting the balance of power, money and resources amongst teams, stakeholders, customers and supply chains. The regenerative design aspect involves examining Circular Economies, for manufactured goods and equipment and Biomimicry for natural resources. Fundamental to the entire process is getting to grips with the business model itself, and how that is supporting or blocking ambitions to be better.

At it’s simplest, the Doughnut Design for Business methodology is a half-day workshop, but in practice it typically expands from there.

I’ve worked with pre-start companies looking to set out a radically different stall and global chemical companies looking to bring together a raft of social and environmental interventions under a common banner. Doughnut Design is not limited to any business or sector, it comes down to mindset, attention and awareness.

As part of the close community of business facilitators within the Doughnut Economics Action Lab I have contributed a variety of business case studies, like Library of Things pictured above, that examine how businesses apply the principles in real life.

And I’m part of a distributed global network of business speakers that the DEAL team endorse to organisations, events and conferences seeking a business perspective on the doughnut.