The area of interest in this master thesis is design principles for a digital B2B food waste oriented platform. The master thesis is based on a case partnership with Food & Bio Cluster. The purpose of this partnership was to explore the potential of a digital platform that promotes a circular food system through the development of the design principles with Food & Bio Cluster as owners of the platform.
Food waste has become one of the major global climate problems, even though it was not long ago that food waste was seen as an inevitable consequence of food production (Ciulli, Kolk, & Boe-Lillegraven, 2020, p. 299). However, today the issue of food waste is increasingly recognized as a failure in the current economic model, largely due to the emergence of a new economic model: the circular economy, where the goal is to avoid waste (Ciulli, Kolk, & Boe-Lillegraven, 2020, p. 299). There is a significant need to fully utilize the Earth's resources (UN, n.d.), which also highlights the need for our food system to move towards a circular economy (Castro, Lizi, Chagas, Carvalho & Vanin, 2020, p. 1). Today, there are already many apps and websites aimed at preventing food from being discarded (Michelini, Principato & Iasevoli, 2018), but many of them operate at the end of the food chain and target private consumers, also known as B2C. This thesis will explore the potential of a digital platform that promotes a circular food system through the development of the design principles. The knowledge gathering in this thesis consists of a literature investigation in the form of a literature review, as well as an empirical investigation comprising a series of qualitative interviews. In the literature review, a potential white spot consisting of a lack of studies examining food waste-oriented platforms targeting B2B was identified. This positions this thesis and supports the significance of this thesis's relevance.
The interview approach used in the thesis is semi-structured interviews, of which five interviews have been conducted. The processing of the empirical data is conducted through interview analysis based on condensation of meaning and interpretation of meaning. The purpose of the interview analysis was to identify insights or themes that I subsequently connected with the theory found in the literature review. Based on the interview analysis, nine thematic areas were derived, which included the identification of challenges that can deter companies from offering or receiving resources on the platform, as well as the motivations of companies to offer or receive resources through the platform. Based on the integration of the findings and the collected knowledge from the literature review, seven design principles were developed. The design principles can therefore be used as an example of how design principles for a digital B2B food waste oriented platform can look like.