Abstract-Sustainability-Watson

=Business Canvas for Energy Informatics=

Richard T. Watson, University of Georgia, USA Tyler Williamson, University of Georgia, USA Marie-Claude Boudreau, University of Georgia, USA Siyuan Li, University of Georgia, USA Zhenxiang Zeng, Hebei University of Technology, China



Abstract
Sustainability needs to be tightly woven into the thinking of every senior executive if we are to develop a sustainable society. Furthermore, those companies seeking to gain from meeting the needs of such a society need to forefront sustainability in all of their planning and product development. With this in mind, we have taken the business model generation canvas (Osterwalder & Pigneur, 2009) and developed a layer to stimulate Energy Informatics (Watson, Boudreau, & Chen, 2010) thinking. Business model generation is a technique to capture the essential features of an organization’s business. It addresses such issues as value proposition, sources of costs and revenues, partnerships, and customers in a concise and graphical manner. Osterwalder and Pigneur’s book has quickly become an international best seller because the technique is powerful and collectively engaging. We have taken the business model generation canvas and created a group collaborative version on Cacoo, [|http://cacoo.com][|/] which is web-based software for creating diagrams collaboratively. One of the features of Cacoo is the ability to create layers, so we have augmented our initial two-layer model of a blank canvas and key questions, with a layer containing questions to provoke Energy Informatics thinking and a layer containing examples of the application of Energy Informatics. Our goal is to use the workshop to discuss the content of each of these layers. Specifically, we would like participants to address the following questions. • Do we have good questions for each segment of the canvas? • Should there be several canvases for different audiences? • What are some good Energy Informatics examples to stimulate thinking? If we have WiFi access during the workshop, we can dynamically revise the canvas. The resulting canvas will be made publicly available to advance the development of Green IS.