Business & Enterprise

Contents

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When Business meets the Doughnut

In short: if you're a business or you work with business, check out DEAL's Doughnut Design for Business tool. Organisations able to help businesses to engage with Doughnut Economics are listed here.

Doughnut Economics calls on businesses to demonstrate how they are going to transform so that they will belong in a future that is regenerative and distributive. The answer is a journey into the deep design of business itself – explored through the Purpose, Networks, Governance, Ownership, and Finance of any business. Regenerative and distributive strategies, practices and ideas can be unlocked through such changes in business design, thereby helping to bring humanity into the Doughnut. For a quick intro to enterprise design, check out our video.

How to use Doughnut Economics with businesses

The tools available for those engaging with businesses are listed below.

DEAL's Policy for Businesses: how can businesses engage with the Doughnut?

To protect the integrity of Doughnut Economics and ensure its potential remains truly transformative, we set out below our policy on how businesses can engage with Doughnut Economics.

All trainings, workshops, events and stories relating to business and Doughnut Economics need to be based on this tool. Businesses that use this tool to identify ways their deep design can evolve are able to communicate publicly about their analysis and future plans in connection to Doughnut Economics in accordance with the guidance set out below. We ask that businesses refrain from associating with Doughnut Economics in any other way.

The following principles apply to any business or enterprise, which we define as organisations that derive the majority of their revenue from trading activities (ie; the sale of products and services). This includes social enterprises, cooperatives, small enterprises, family companies, and multinational corporations, among other forms of business. This also applies to advisors and consultants in their work with business clients, for whom DEAL's Policy for Consultancies and Organisations also applies.

(Last Updated: November, 2022)

Across all our work at Doughnut Economics Action Lab we aim to balance openness with protecting the integrity of the concept of Doughnut Economics. This is particularly important in the field of business where the concept is most at risk of getting greenwashed or co-opted, and if that were to happen, Doughnut Economics would be devalued and discredited for all changemakers. To open this area of work in a transformative manner, DEAL has now created the Doughnut Design for Business tool and an accompanying policy for how businesses can engage with Doughnut Economics.

The seven principles listed below set out DEAL’s policy for businesses (including consultants in their work with business clients) and for anyone engaging with the topic of business and Doughnut Economics. This means that any business or organisation wanting to introduce and apply Doughnut Economics to businesses must do so by focusing on the deep design of business, as outlined in the Doughnut Design for Business tool.

DEAL's Policy for Businesses: the 7 Principles for Businesses

5. ADDITIONAL GUIDANCE WELCOME, BUT NO NEW TOOLS RELATED TO BUSINESS

We ask that no new tools are created on the topic of Doughnut Economics and business. However, we do welcome feedback, additional guidance and context-specific adaptations to DEAL’s Doughnut Design for Business tool that are tailored for companies in specific contexts or industries. We ask that such adaptations be submitted to the DEAL team before they are published or publicly shared.

6. SHARE BACK LEARNINGS FROM USING THE TOOL

Consultancies or other organisations engaging with DEAL’s Doughnut Design for Business tool as part of their professional advisory services, are required to register on DEAL's platform and submit a public declaration form. This includes sharing back their experience and learning with the rest of the DEAL community. In this context, that means to contribute with stories in the platform that ‘share back’ insights covering key aspects of the workshop, as well as suggested ways in which the tool can improve. If you are a not-for-profit organisation using the Doughnut Design for Business tool with businesses, we also ask that you register on DEAL's platform and submit a public declaration form. This includes sharing back your experience and insights from using the tool with the rest of the DEAL community too, in the spirit of reciprocity and peer-to-peer learning. If you’re using this for ‘internal reflection’ as a business, it is optional to share back your insights. If you choose to, please connect with us through the DEAL contact form. Note also the dos and don’ts at the start of this tool.

7. PROPOSE CASE STUDIES OF BUSINESS

DEAL would like to select and share some compelling case studies that demonstrate how the most transformative regenerative and distributive ideas can be unlocked through business design and redesign. We invite businesses to share stories with us that focus on the following:

the most ambitious regenerative and distributive ideas to pursue
how the current design of the business currently blocks or enables these ideas
how a redesign of the business can unlock and enable these ideas.

To submit a case study, please share it through the DEAL contact form, choosing the category 'Tools and Stories' and theme ‘Business and Enterprise’. To retain the integrity and ambition of Doughnut Economics, DEAL itself will post these on the platform, and we ask that case study stories of individual businesses are not posted directly to the DEAL platform.

1. FOCUS ON ENTERPRISE DESIGN

When applied to businesses, Doughnut Economics focuses on the deep design of business. The design of business is about its purpose and its network of relationships, how it is governed and owned and the nature of its relationship with finance. The essence of the journey a business goes through in applying Doughnut Economics is to first understand the impacts it has on the dimensions of the Doughnut, then identify the most ambitious and bold ideas that would enable it to be part of a regenerative and distributive future, before exploring how its current design enables and holds back such possibilities. The journey ends with ideas for redesigning the business in order to enable the most transformative regenerative and distributive ideas to be realised. This journey entails a deep reflection into the organisational design of the business itself and into the structural changes needed if it is to become regenerative and distributive by design (as outlined in the Doughnut Design for Business tool).

2. NO ‘COMPANY DOUGHNUTS’

The Doughnut Economics approach to downscaling ‘fair shares’ of global resource use takes human rights and equity as a starting point. As a result, Doughnut Economics is not aligned with current approaches that seek to allocate global resource budgets to businesses on the basis of their output, workforce or value-added. These ‘grandfathering’ approaches grant preferential treatment to incumbent large-scale operations, to the detriment of smaller and emerging enterprises that may embody a far more regenerative and distributive design. There are many existing frameworks that invite businesses to engage with such questions of allocation of global resources, and those interested in using them should refrain from calling the analysis a ‘company Doughnut’ or associating the results with Doughnut Economics. For more information on DEAL’s policy of ‘No Company Doughnuts’, see the section below.

3. PUBLIC FACING CLAIMS ONLY ABOUT REDESIGN OF BUSINESS

Any business that has been inspired by Doughnut Economics to make or explore substantive changes to its deep design (including by using the Doughnut Design for Business tool) is welcome to communicate publicly about this. We ask that any communication is limited to Doughnut Economics serving as inspiration for changes in its deep design, through addressing its Purpose, Networks, Governance, Ownership, and Finance. The concepts and images of Doughnut Economics cannot be used for any other public communication by businesses. We also ask that there are no public facing claims or communication that suggests any business is within the Doughnut, a Doughnut Business, aligned with Doughnut Economics, endorsed by DEAL, or similar. The above also applies to consultants in their work with business clients.

4. DOUGHNUT TRAININGS OR EVENTS BASED ON THE TOOL

We ask that all trainings, workshops or events on the application of Doughnut Economics to businesses (including by consultants in their work with business clients) use DEAL’s Doughnut Design for Business tool, retaining the integrity and ambitious goals of the concepts and the tool.

The Doughnut Design for Business tool sets out how businesses can engage with Doughnut Economics. It is available as a core version (5 hours) and as a taster version (2 hours).

Built for use by workshop facilitators, it guides businesses through a practical and action-oriented workshop to generate the business design changes appropriate for their context. It aims to catalyse innovations in the deep design of any business that can enable them to pursue an ambitious agenda of transformation and to become regenerative and distributive in their strategies, operations, and impacts, and so helping to bring humanity into the Doughnut. The Doughnut Design for Business core tool, and the accompanying paper are now available in French, German, Portuguese and Spanish via this folder.

View DEAL's 2-part training webinar on running workshops for businesses with this tool: Part 1 video here, and Part 2 video here.

Click here to view the tool

Doughnut Design for Business tool

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What people say about Doughnut Design for Business

"The Doughnut Design for Business tool has helped us explore regenerative and distributive ideas for the future of the coffee sector. We've run the workshops at our global tradeshows to help businesses and organizations across our network to identify ways to unlock transformative ideas through changes in their deep design. The tool provides an ambitious and essential journey for all companies that want to help humanity into the Doughnut."
Andrés Montenegro, Sustainability Director, Specialty Coffee Association

"For all entrepreneurs, the way they design their business will be critical. After all, the business model is the message. If entrepreneurs want to ambitiously pursue a social or ecological purpose, they will need to shape their governance and relationship with investors accordingly. For our community of craft-led enterprises and startups supporting diverse artisan producers, the Doughnut Design for Business tool offers a great guided journey that can help them take charge of these critical business design choices in-line with their purpose."
Priya Krishnamoorthy, Founder and CEO, 200 Million Artisans

"At Faith In Nature, we’re hugely inspired by the Doughnut Economics framework and grateful for the support of the team at DEAL. Our own Doughnut journey has meant making Nature a director of our company, which we did to incorporate the Rights of Nature into our business model — recognising that Nature is not an infinitely extractive resource but, rather, a key stakeholder reliant upon us to create new relationships between the business world and the natural world. Such a move, we have come to understand, is one of the myriad ways businesses can transform to ensure we all live within the Doughnut."
Simeon Rose, Creative Director, Faith In Nature

"Business Declares believes that the business sector is a crucial element for tackling the climate, ecological and social emergency and businesses most certainly have the potential to be a force for good in addressing this crisis. In order to achieve this, what’s needed is a deep questioning and potentially far reaching redesign of a business’s purpose, operating model and value chain. The Doughnut Design for business tool is a practical methodology for doing exactly this and we would recommend that businesses explore this tool as part of their climate impact plans and transition roadmaps."
Ben Tolhurst, Director, Business Declares

Business paper

Read our paper on what Doughnut Economics means for business. It provides background and detail on the core concepts covered in the Doughnut Design for Business tool. The paper was co-authored by DEAL and Centre for Economic Transformation. The paper is also now available in French, German, Portuguese and Spanish via this folder.

Click here to download paper

Why ‘No Company Doughnuts’

A growing number of initiatives are seeking to measure and allocate to businesses a ‘fair share’ of global resource budgets (such as CO2) that respect planetary boundaries. Existing approaches to allocating such shares of resource use to businesses are often based on how large the company is (e.g. in terms of its current output, value-added, or work-force). In practice this ‘grandfathering’ approach grants preferential treatment to incumbent large-scale operations, to the detriment of smaller and emerging enterprises that may embody a far more regenerative and distributive design.

More fundamentally, this methodology is inconsistent with DEAL’s equity-based approach to downscaling the Doughnut to places, which starts by recognising that the most ethically legitimate way to distribute fair access to use of Earth’s common resources within planetary boundaries is on the basis of human rights. This approach leads to an allocation of resource use on a per capita basis, while taking historic resource use and developmental needs into account, and as far as we are aware, there is currently no methodology that credibly and traceably translates such an approach into an implied allocation for any individual company.

DEAL has seen sectoral Doughnut initiatives engaging with data-led methods that aim to monitor social and ecological outcomes at whole-sector scale, or that seek to assess positive and negative impacts at project-level scale. An overview of how sectoral initiatives are engaging with Doughnut Economics can be found in 'Sectors, Let's get Started'. In terms of allocating shares of global resource budgets in a sectoral Doughnut, see A Doughnut for Urban Development for a useful description of DEAL’s recommended approach. Notably, DEAL insists that all sectoral Doughnut initiatives must ground their quantitative downscaling of planetary boundaries to the context of a national ‘fair share’ based on Doughnut-aligned ethical sharing principles, such as equality, capacity, or historical responsibility (i.e. not status quo or ‘grandfathering’).

For the reasons above, we ask that the concepts of Doughnut Economics are not used in initiatives that seek to allocate global resource shares to businesses. There are many existing frameworks that invite businesses to engage with questions of allocation of global resources, and those interested in using them should refrain from calling the analysis a ‘company Doughnut’ or associating the results with Doughnut Economics. We encourage researchers and practitioners to get in touch with DEAL if they believe they are developing an approach to business resource allocation that does have an equity-based starting point rooted in human rights. If any other researchers or analysts wish to apply Doughnut Economics to businesses in a different way to the Doughnut Design for Business tool, we ask that they get in touch with DEAL before proceeding.

Practitioners who can work with businesses on Doughnut Economics

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DEAL's business tools

Scroll right to check out DEAL's tools for exploring the connection between Doughnut Economics and business. There are tools for those working with and within businesses, those involved business education and for policy-makers.

Any business can use DEAL’s business tools for internal reflection. Those hoping to use the tools with other businesses (e.g. consultants) need to register on DEAL’s platform by submitting a public declaration form.