Theory of Change

In a capitalist system, for a more sustainable (but more expensive) product to succeed, there must be a market for it.

For that market to exist:

• Customer must be aware of an alternative, more sustainable product exists
• Customer must have desire or incentive to purchase the more sustainable product
• The market conditions must be so that the despite a higher costs, the sustainable product is purchased

Example: Wind turbines - a more sustainable product to produce energy. Compared to burning coal, the costs of producing energy with wind is higher. Regulators changed market conditions to allow wind energy to be prioritized (and thus be used when available, despite being more expensive). Governments subsidized the production of wind turbines to artificially reduce the costs. Climate activists & scientist created awareness for the alternative method of energy production. And by subsidizing production, the sustainable product was purchasable by customers without higher costs (and thus a potential disadvantage for customers).

Now, the science of change suggests that change happens through informal network of people rather than within existing hierachies. An example is the French Revolution.

Therefore, for more sustainable digital products to succeed, we must:

1. Assemble a network of informal actors with a desire to advocate for change and create awareness that an alternative does exist.
2. Lobby regulators to change the market conditions so that the sustainable digital product is a viable alternative, with cost-parity being paramount within the capitalistic system.
3. Inform and lobby governments to create subsidies to kick-start the production of sustainable digital products and enable scale so that cost of production will decrease. Governments should also use their purchase power (which is not driven by the capitalism-mantra of seeking lowest price/highest efficency) to create initial demand.

My assumption here is, and I remain convinced that changing the economic system from capitalism to something else, albeit being the effective change, will take too long and therefore should aim to work on making sustainable products win within the current system.

Based on this strategy, the following resources are needed:

1. A platform which contains knowledge, resources and facts which the informal network of change agents can leverage to create awareness
2. A community (network) of actors from the digital product ecosystem who get together to learn how to use the available resources to create awareness, develop strategies & tactics together and share lessons-learned on what works well / doesn’t work.
3. A proposed market design & conditions in which sustainable digital products would be favored despite their potential cost disadvantage.
4. A set of policy proposals that aim to create demand through government purchasing of sustainable digital products as well as subsidies to reduce cost of production.
5. Evidence of market-failure so that governments & regulators have a mandate to intervene.