Innovative Business Models Accelerate Sustainable Transition in Agri-Food
Postdoc Sepide Mehrabi explores how innovative business models enable sustainable transitions in agri-food systems through collaboration between businesses, consumers, and strategies for externalities.
, Postdoc at the Innovation Technology Entrepreneurship and Marketing (ITEM) research group, earned a Cum Laude distinction for her PhD at the University of Almer铆a on October 21. Her research demonstrates how innovative business models can accelerate the transition toward sustainable agri-food systems.
Challenge
Making food value chains more sustainable is one of today鈥檚 most pressing societal challenges. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and social inequality demand fundamental changes in how food is produced, distributed, and consumed. Entrepreneurs face complex questions: how can they remain profitable while integrating ecological and social values? How do you actively involve consumers in this transformation?
Insights
Mehrabi鈥檚 research shows that business models embedding sustainability at their core play a pivotal role in this transition. She examined how companies can engage consumers not just as buyers but as active participants. Her work also explored mechanisms that determine how sustainability-oriented innovations scale within agri-food systems. Another key focus was the internalization of externalities, such as environmental damage or social costs, into business strategies. This approach helps correct market failures and makes true costs visible.
New ways
These findings matter for entrepreneurs, policymakers, and consumers alike. They highlight that collaboration and innovative business strategies are essential to making the agri-food sector future-proof. This requires new ways of creating value that balance economic, ecological, and social interests.
Next steps
Building on her doctoral work, Mehrabi now continues her research as a postdoctoral researcher in the at Eindhoven University of Technology. She studies how technological innovations designed to improve transparency and traceability transform agri-food value chains. Her work examines how these tools reshape interorganizational and multistakeholder collaboration, shift data ownership, and redefine the strategic positioning of actors in increasingly connected systems. She also analyzes how these developments generate new power dynamics and information asymmetries, advancing understanding of the organizational and system-level changes needed to build sustainable and trustworthy agri-food value chains.