From Local Action to System Change: Advancing NEXRUR’s Community-Led Business Models
With the main objective of supporting communities in developing businesses that contribute to a just and sustainable future – while consolidating lessons learned and success factors for scaling up and out – Wageningen University & Research, in cooperation with the University of Burgos, coordinates the NEXRUR innovation network of 15 community-led businesses across Europe. The network brings together expertise in social networking, co-creation, and stakeholder engagement.
A few months into the project, the current focus is on the development and application of the Community Led Business Model (CLBM) canvas. This tool helps to better understand, compare, and learn from and between the NEXRUR community-led business cases. It supports learning and exchange, makes the full potential of community-led business models visible, facilitates both research and practice, and serves the purpose of self-analysis, comparison, and research, contributing to the core objective of NEXRUR.
The CLBM canvas works on several interconnected levels. First, it examines how the initiative works today by analysing the concrete configuration of the business model – its value proposition, activities, partners, resources, and financial flows. This level also includes reflection on how activities are coordinated and where dependencies or tensions may arise.
Second, the canvas explores what the initiative creates in the real world. It considers the intended and actual effects for people, nature, and the economy, including ambitions, responsibilities taken on voluntarily, and impacts that are not directly priced or sanctioned. At this level, reflection focuses on which aspects of the business model contribute to these outcomes and which may create tensions or trade-offs.
Finally, the canvas looks at how the initiative relates to broader system change. It examines how Community-Led Business Models may influence narratives, practices, markets, governance arrangements, or power relations beyond their own organisation.
The NEXRUR community cases will now use the CLBM canvas to dive deeper into their business model and reflect internally on its elements, its effects for people and planet and its contribution to system change. This work serves as preparation for the first face-to-face workshop of the NEXRUR innovation network organised by the University of Burgos (Spain) in April. During these two intensive days all practice partners and research partners involved in the community cases will come together for an inspiring programme of exchange, shared learning, and deeper understanding. The aim is to strengthen insight into each CLBM and explore how its potential can be realised to create just and sustainable, prosperous rural areas.
