Place-Based Doughnut Design for Business: Oxford!

On the 11th of April we we took the new Place Based Doughnut Design for Business Tool' on a 'test-drive' right here on home turf in the city of Oxford. For the benefit of other practitioners looking to use the tool in their place, here's a summary of what we did, some reflections, and what we learned along the way;

🛠 What we did 

👥 Who was in the room?
 12 attendees plus three facilitators; Erinch Sahan of DEAL, Siobhann Mansel-Pleydell and Joel Petterson of the Oxfordshire Doughnut Project . We curated the invite list to ensure a balance across Oxfordshire's 'embedded economy'. Attendees included senior business leaders (mostly from the Oxfordshire B Corp community), representatives from Oxfordshire County Council and the Strategic Economic Planning team, the CEO of a local nature recovery charity, and a local community wealth-builder.

📍 Location :
We gave careful consideration to the location so that it was accessible by public transport but also demonstrative of a purposeful business.  Community Works Oxford is rooted in community and part of Make Space Oxfordshire, an organisation that addresses some of the challenges presented in the Oxfordshire Doughnut.

⏰  Duration: Three and a half hours.
 

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🍩  Session outline

1)  Portrait of Place: 

We began with a presentation of a hyper-distilled version of the Oxfordshire Data Portrait of Place beginning with the global lenses and progressing through to the local. Here's Joel!

2) The Embedded Economy
 While not part of the official tool, we included a very brief introductory framing around the embedded economy — presenting the economy as a social system, embedded within society and the living world — to help situate the business role more holistically, with businesses in relationship with all parts of the economy.

3) Four Lenses for Business:

We explored the Four Lenses from a business perspective....

4)  Place Based Business Design:

In small groups, we considered how the deep design of business could address place-based challenges...

5) Policy Exploration...

And very briefly toward the end, a broad discussion on policy. This however needed more time...
 

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💭 Reflections From the Room

#1. "This works well in a multi-actor environment"

Having people from across the economy' sparked connections and fresh thinking.

🛠 Learning / adaptation;
Don't limit invitations to business leaders.  Give careful consideration to your invite list, Curate a group with representation across the embedded economy: policymakers, social enterprises, funders, charities and nature organisations.

#2. The Place-based focus is a wake up call

"We need to lift our head up and pay attention to this place"

Although challenging at times, the workshop served to plug an awareness gap on local challenges - and prompt recognition that there's a lot a business can respond to in their deep design to address these challenges. One participant said in the plenary reflections that she'd come to the realisation that her nationally distributed organisation, with over 100 employees in Oxfordshire, needed to focus their attention closer to home. 

🛠 Learning / adaptation;
The power and potential of bringing the place-based lens to business redesign felt very real.  The 'Four Lenses for Business' exercise needed more time especially on share-back and discussion on how the business community can respond. Build in lots of examples of regenerative and distributive actions by businesses - the newly published swag-bag of stories published here on DEAL will be really useful for this.

#3. "We can't do this alone"

Reviewing the challenges of the Doughnut in a multi-actor setting was useful for recognising the interdependence of relationships across the Oxfordshire economy as a 'social system'.  Participants acknowledged the systemic nature of place-based challenges, and the need for partnership and collaboration across networks - and that the ways in which different parts of the economy operate together in relationship are vital to shift us into 'the safe and just space' across these complex challenges. 

🛠 Learning / adaptation;
With Oxfordshire breeching most planetary boundaries and facing systemic challenges across the social foundation, it wasn't easy for groups to find focus. Consider a group activity focussed on a particular dimension or challenge grounded in your specific place. For example, how might the actors at the table respond to water stress, biodiversity loss, or material consumption? Having people wearing different hats and responding as business leaders, funders, policy designers, householders, community wealth builders to co-design a response would help bring focus.

 

#4. Balance the rough with the smooth..

The Oxfordshire Preliminary Data Portrait paints a fairly alarming picture for Oxfordshire and, for some, this was quite confronting. We didn't allow enough time to unpack stories of hope and real action already happening in Oxfordshire. 

🛠 Learning / adaptation;
😇 If you don't yet have a Community Portrait of Place, balance the raw data with local stories of ambition, aspiration, and action. This will counter the overwhelm, but also serve to provide inspiring, relatable examples of what's already happening; stories the cohort can be proud of that exemplify 'how to'.
🍩 Added to this, again, build in lots of examples of generative and distributive actions by businesses from the stories published on DEAL. 

#5 'Yes but how? Tell me...' 

The seemingly human gravitational pull toward the safety of an action plan / framework / to-do-list is strong. The Place Based Doughnut Design for Business tool is effectively an innovation roadmap rooted in place. This makes complexity palpable.  Some participants expected to come away with an action plan. Instead, the session opened up new ways of thinking about business in relationship with place.
 
🛠 Learning / adaptation;
 🗣 Make it really clear ahead of time that this tool provokes discussion and unlocks new ways of thinking about how businesses can work in relationship in the local economy. 

📚 Although we shared links ahead of the session, we didn't set any pre-reads. Setting some required pre-reading and or watching will help bring participants to the same level. 

📆  All participants were happy with the length of the workshop of 3.5 hours but all agreed they felt they needed more time to really get under the skin of things. Given the complexity involved, consider spreading the tool over two separate sessions or a full day session with lunch in between. 

 

#6 Connections,  sparked. ✨

That one person's 'how might our business respond to the biodiversity issue?' could be answered by the 'nature' rep on the other table saying, 'our org is actively looking for businesses to support our nature recovery initiatives' reinforced the power of co-sensing in a multi-actor context.

🛠 Learning / adaptation;
Could the workshop become a springboard for collaborative action? How do we take it forward?

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✅ In Summary...

The Place-Based Doughnut Design for Business tool shifts perspective in meaningful ways. It is a powerful prompt for both bringing focus to complex local challenges, and unlocking fresh ways of thinking about how businesses can respond through the deep design of their own business models. Framed through the lens of the embedded economy, it encourages a mindset shift: from siloed action, to system-based collaboration rooted in place. And in delivering this road-test - a salient reminder that we humans need to balance doomy data with hope and inspiration. ✨ ✨

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💬 Participant Feedback

"Energising and insightful, seeing our county through the hole in the Doughnut helps to focus the mind on just how far we are away from a sustainable existence and how critical it is that we take collective action to resize our economy and lifestyles to fit inside it."

"The workshops help envisage the potential of a sustainable economy of Oxfordshire. Putting the focus on local people, businesses and environment "

"Many thanks to Siobhann and Erinch for running this event. Months of hard work and complicated data wizardry were explained very clearly, and led to some insightful conversation about how the decisions we make as individuals and organisations impact Oxfordshire and the world. I left with a renewed sense of urgency to address our issues, but empowered that there are strategies in which we can do it!"

"The event could be longer! It felt that certain bits we had to rush through or not fully explore as we had run out of time. I'd happily have attended a full day!"

"On the business side of things, I think the emphasis should be on procurement as it' what makes things happen or not. How can we create a sustainable procurement system that benefits all parties including the environment."

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Handy links related to this post;

The Doughnut Design for Business Case Studies can be found here;
https://doughnuteconomics.org/tools/doughnut-design-for-business-case-studies

The full report from the Oxfordshire Doughnut Project can be found here;
https://doughnuteconomics.org/stories/an-oxfordshire-doughnut-economics-project

The Preliminary Oxfordshire Data Portrait of Place can be found here;
https://doughnuteconomics.org/stories/an-oxfordshire-preliminary-data-portrait-of-place