Bybi – Citybee
Bybi is a social enterprise and association that enables co-production of honey by renting beehives to public, private, and social organisations in the city of Copenhagen. Bybi is in charge of processing and selling the honey produced by these rented beehives, and moreover Bybi conducts beekeeping and honey production courses in both the collaborating and other organisations, such as schools and non-profit housing organisations. The association is founded on an urge to find a model of production that contributes to a richer environment and inclusive communities.
Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
Key stakeholders are the companies and organisations that rent beehives and the municipality of Copenhagen. Beneficiaries can be understood as both the employees of Bybi, but also the customers of the honey products.
Co-creation process
The production of honey is inherently based on a co-creation process; Bybi-employees work closely together with the employees from the different organisations, and when customers buy Bybi products they also receive seeds to plant – to ensure biodiversity for bees.
Digital Transformation Process
No digital transformation process is going on.
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
Some of the people who work at Bybi are at the edge of the labour market. However, they are not treated as people that need to be re-integrated into the labour market, since the outset is that all people contribute to society. Hence Bybi aims to build an inclusive community of people with a shared vision of bees and honey production.
Challenges & Bottlenecks
There are some challenges related to communication, that is, to communicate what the company is all about and that it takes time to communicate identity. Another type of challenge is related to the ambitions of turning a factory on its head making space for consumers to act as co-producers – but it can also be understood as a driver, since it triggers an urge to find new ways and solutions.
Transferability & Replicability
Still, Bybi only exists in Copenhagen, but the idea and form of organisation are not limited to this context.
Success Factors
The objective of Bybi is to change humans from passive consumers into active co-producers of a richer natural environment and a more inclusive society. More concretely, Bybi’s influence can be described with regard to areas where Bybi has potential contributions: Creating opportunities for people to contribute to society, improving the experience of the environment, helping organisations to carry out CSR strategies and turning the factory on its head.
Lessons learned
Bybi grows out of social economy, but is confronting a wider societal and public problem of transforming the labour market and enriching the environment. It argues that this goes far beyond the Danish system of social enterprises. Hence Bybi is more an institutional entrepreneur than a social entrepreneur aiming to reconfigure relationships between labour and pleasure, production and co-production, humans and non-humans and consumption and production.