Prof. dr. Jan Jonker

About Jan Jonker

Prof. Dr. J. (Jan) Jonker (emeritus, spring 2021) specializes in sustainable entrepreneurship, strategy, and the development of sustainable and circular business modeling. He had worked for more than 30 years as an associate professor and professor at the Nijmegen School of Management (NSM) of Radboud University Nijmegen (RU). Between 2014-2016, he also held the Pierre de Fermat chair at Toulouse Business School (TBS) in Toulouse (France) and between 2017-2018 the Emilie Francqui chair at the Free University in Brussels, Belgium.

During a fruitful career, he was director of his faculty’s PhD school for ten years. He created an international conference series on sustainable business models, with the 7th edition held in June 2022 in Rome. Previous editions took place in Toulouse, Graz, Budapest, Berlin, Nijmegen, and Halmstad. For seven years (2009-2015), he was nominated in the Top 100 list of most influential ‘green’ people in the Netherlands. In the autumn of 2018, he was appointed Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau by His Majesty King Willem-Alexander for his societal contributions to popularizing sustainability and circularity.

Professor Jonker’s research interests include developing strategies for sustainability and circularity related to new business concepts and models. Within this focus, he investigates how (inter)organizational collaboration around sustainability and circularity can lead to transformation and transition. His work has led to a practical approach for developing business models, the ‘Business Model Template’ (BMT). More recently (2021), he developed a classification of sustainable and circular business models for the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.

Much of his work is based on teamwork, with teams on a national and international basis. To date, he has written and co-authored 35 books, published more than 150 articles, and contributed to numerous blogs, talk shows, and radio programs. In recent years, he wrote, edited, and published the ‘Sustainable Throne Speech’ (2020), ‘Sustainable Organizing’ (2020). The translation of this book, ‘Organizing for Sustainability’ (2021), is a global mega-hit with over 160,000 downloads in the first year. He is currently working on a new book about concepts for transition that will be published in the spring of 2024.

In the spring of 2021, he withdrew from active academic life and returned to consultancy work based on applied research. He remains a frequently requested international speaker. When he is not working, he enjoys cooking and continues to restore his 16th-century house in southern France.