Business Models for Smart Sustainability: A Critical Perspective on Smart Homes and Sustainability Transitions

This chapter examines the sustainability of smart technologies in the housing segment of the building sector from a critical perspective. It considers the prerequisites for digital technologies, business models, and user practices to support a sustainable trajectory of the housing segment. This research adopts socio-technical and practice-based perspectives to investigate the interrelated dynamics of individuals, organisations, and institutions for sustainable socio-technical transitions. It is based on an organisational ethnography of the VELUX Group and the Active House Alliance, as well as interviews across the building industry, centring on two demonstration projects in Brussels, Belgium, and Toronto, Canada. The work takes the view that sustainability dimensions and sustainability value in housing are invisible, that smart technologies facilitate their measurement and thus visibility, and that there is increasing organisational interest and engagement in business ecosystems for smart homes. The chapter points towards the following prerequisites for a sustainability trajectory of smart homes: integrated building performance that can deliver measurable sustainability results; balancing personal data usage with the personal significance of digital technology uses; and considering housing sustainability as a joint responsibility between producers and consumers. Altogether, the chapter outlines both the basis of these prerequisites and how business models can interlink the changes needed on multiple levels for sustainable socio-technical transitions.