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Our project
A 6-month tour of Europe to meet actors with interesting sustainable models analysed through the Functional and Cooperative Economy (FCE)
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At first, we want to educate ourselves about innovative sustainable models, in particular the Functional and Cooperative Economy (FCE). See below what is FCE.
Then, we try to identify european companies or other kind of organizations that we think have a sustainable model. We discuss about their model through the FCE concepts.
Finally, we collaborate with french experts and students to give concrete example of what is FCE by creating a fiction around the activity of the organizations we meet. This allows us, as learners, to practice FCE.
What is FCE ?
Functional and Cooperative Economy
Functional and Cooperative Economy
"The FCE consists in providing companies, individuals or territories with integrated solutions of services and goods based on the sale of a performance of use or a use and not on the simple sale of goods" (ADEME).
The traditional model based on profitability and the sale of goods in large quantities is running out of steam.
With the focus on profitability, companies are cutting costs at the expense of the quality of the products and services they offer. Constant competition forces companies to reduce their prices to keep their customers and remain profitable. They must therefore produce more to keep a similar margin. They then enter a vicious circle that has no possible outcome.
This infernal loop generates well-known negative externalities, including :
environmental problems : over-consumption of resources, pollution, ...
economic problems : especially for small companies that cannot distinguish themselves from large groups with significant results.
social problems : loss of meaning and poor working conditions due to the financialisation of the economy and productivism.
The FCE is a solution that allows us to move away from a model focused on accumulation and volume. The challenge is to move towards a model that redefines what has value and how to produce it.
Two differents scales
Two differents scales
Company
Company
Companies that want to move away from the current industrial model based on volume sale, in order to respond to environmental and social issues while maintaining their business.
Territory
Territory
Set of stakeholders (local authority, companies, associations, citizens...) that will try to cooperate in order to answer the challenges of a territory (feeding, housing, ...)
The FCE is not a model that can be duplicated from one company/organization to another. Rather, it is an approach that can help companies/organizations in their transition to a more sustainable model.
Companies/organizations are not seeking to achieve FCE but to follow an FCE trajectory.
Practical example
Practical example
The story of a printing company
Business as usual
The company sells communication prints to its clients. In order to increase its revenues, its goal is to sell as much and as fast as possible. In order to stand out from the competition, the company must, in part, lower its sales prices. Thus, to keep its margin, the company must sell even more. It's a vicious circle with no way out.
The company's goal being profitability, the interest of the sales team is to sell more products to the client than he really needs.
The production team must then optimize the industrial model in order to increase the production rate. The pressure on employees and stakeholders to produce more and more is increasing. The company will try to invest in more efficient machines. The majority of investments goes to material resources .
The company operates with a volume logic centered on production and detached from the real needs of the client. This logic has many negative externalities:
- On the environment: this logic of volume based on unlimited resources is not compatible with the limits of our planet. The increase of the company's turnover is fully correlated with the use of resources.
- On the stakeholders: employees lose the sense of work because it consists in optimizing processes to produce more and faster while moving away from the company's purpose. In addition, the client's need is not met efficiently.
- On the resilience of the company: the company is in competition with the market and becomes replaceable by its clients because of costs and delays. Its development is not based on an efficient response to its customers' needs. There is no long-term cooperation and no common interests.
Business following FCE
The company no longer sells prints as a product but print projects. It focuses on the service it provides to its clients.
The company worked on the real use that the clients had of the printed documents. By questioning its clients, it realized that the majority of these products ended up in the bin or were not used. The company had rethink the purpose of its business. It switched from a casual printer to a printing project advisor. This change allowed the company to move toward a service offer based on what is valuable: meeting the client's communication needs as best as possible.
The company's business model has changed. It now offers to print without any commitment of quantity at a fixed price, in exchange for a monthly fee. The fixed price per print allows to get out of the volume logic because the client has no more interest in buying large quantities to pay less. The monthly fee is the price put on the new service offer.
The organization has also changed. The production do not correspond any more to a traditional industrial logic where the machines must turn day and night to be paying for themselves. Flexibility being a central point in the organization of work, there must be a machine available at all times to adapt to the client's needs.
This new model needs a close collaboration between the company and its clients. It will help the client to understand his needs and build with him the most efficient solution. The increase of the revenue becomes correlated with the qualitative and relevant service offer rather than on the number of printed products. These services allow them to take their clients in a collaborative and more responsible printing approach, the goal being to print the right need and thus reduce waste as much as possible. The company also collaborates with other printers for the printing of specific products or with communication agencies to build together an answer adapted to the final client's need.
This model is beneficial for the environment (less energy and raw materials involved, less waste...) and for human development (better engagement of employees and customers, brings meaning to work...). The company thus decreases the material resources involved while increasing those known as "intangible" (health at work, customer confidence, employee skills).
The less they print, the more all stakeholders gain! No more power struggles in the value chain.
Four concepts to explore
Four concepts to explore
Territorial performance / performance of use
Territorial performance / performance of use
Performance means the most efficient way to meet the clients/territorial needs. The way to reach and maintain it is to no longer being focused on the product/service sold but on what these bring to the society.
Immaterial resources development
Immaterial resources development
The development of intangible resources (skills, knowledge, employee health, etc.) allows a reduction in material resources through the development of a better quality offer.
Consideration of externalities
Consideration of externalities
An externality is an unwanted indirect effect that a company has on society or the environment. It can be positive (e.g. the well-being of citizens) and negative (e.g. air pollution). The company seeks to identify and take care of the externalities. This means to reduce the negative ones and develop the positive ones.
Cooperation dynamics
Cooperation dynamics
Co-construct the service offer with the client and other stakeholders to best meet their needs. The aim is to create the most effective product/service possible and to create a convergence of interests between the stakeholders. In the end, the goal of the cooperation is to listen and take into account the constraints of all actors.
What we do concretely
What we do concretely
Pre-selecting companies/organizations that we think have interesting models for handling environmental and social issues. To find these organizations, we have several entry points: networks of Circular Economy (CE), Social Economy or Sustainable Development.
Interviewing a competent person in the organization we found through the 4 concepts mentioned above. Then, with the experts and a group of students we analyse these information and try to create a fiction to illustrate how could be a similar organization following a FCE trajectory.
Travelling by van from one company to another. Despite the ecological cost of travelling by van, this means of transport allows for flexibility of movement which will enable us to meet the companies more easily.
The team
Gurvan Guennec
Gurvan Guennec
Icam engineer (2021) / Specialised Master in Circular Economy Unilasalle (2022)
"For a few years I have been interested in the circular economy. Being a fan of low tech, this trip is inspired by the work that the low tech lab does in researching new low tech all over the world and sharing it in open source to all. I believe very much in the potential of the economy of functionality and cooperation to change our model. This project is therefore for me synonymous with encounters, discoveries, inspirations and cooperation, so that we can all find tomorrow's model together."
Léo Poilane
Léo Poilane
Icam engineer (2021)
"I am passionate about outdoor sports and naturally have a certain curiosity about models that seek to limit our negative impact on the environment. I see this project as a good way to push my curiosity towards the FCE model which seems to me a relevant answer to the problems we face today. Indeed, unlike the band-aids we put on the consequences of our current system, the FCE is a solution that addresses the problem upstream."
Team support
Sébastien Boucq
Sébastien Boucq
"The question of the economic model/mechanism of an organisaion and the development model of a territory is complex. Moreover, over the last ten years, more and more players, still pioneers, have been developing their model, generating a profusion of initiatives (circular, blue economy, etc.) that are more or less robust and understandable."
Among the actors at the origin of the FCE, Sébastien Boucq, engineer, geographer, is backing us up.
Sébastien is an administrator of the Club Noé association (partner of the IE-EFC), an active member of many Social Economy structures (La NEF, etc.) and co-founder of Ecopolis, a higher education institution in Lille which trains on the stakes mentioned on this website.
Hervé Moalic
Hervé Moalic
During the past 20 years Hervé has been working with local communities committed in nature conservation : how to reach high level of biodiversity while managing human activities such as tourism, agriculture, fishing, extraction, wind farming, … ?
The key point is cooperation : as we are able to imagine a common future where everyone can play his role, things become easier.
To achieve transitions towards more sustainable business models, Herve is today an advisor in cooperation and economical transitions, part of Immaterra cooperative.
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