In this blog, you will post about Sustainability and Business. If you have any questions or if you have trouble posting, please reach out to Andre.
Blog Post: Sustainability, Business Model Innovation, and the next 5 years
The next five years are likely to be century-defining. Global economic, political, and cultural institutions will change in unforeseen ways. Within this context, this group assignment is an opportunity for you to reflect on and define a project that you or an organization you are interested in can use to achieve the UN SDGs. Potential projects could be a new business model or startup, an innovative change to an existing business model, a movement to change consumer behavior, a project to disseminate a new technology, or even a new grassroots movement. The blog post should address:
- The motivation for the project: Why did you choose this project? What UN SDGs does this project help achieve? Why is there a gap that your team can help fill? Why is this project relevant for the next 5 years?
- Project value proposition and goals:
- Describe your project’s value proposition.
- Describe the sustainability and financial goals of this project.
- How will you measure progress towards these goals? What UN SDG indicators does this project achieve?
- Project’s business model:
- Describe the project’s business model (describe in terms of revenue model, cost model, resource velocity, the business model canvas, or however you see fit);
- Are sustainability and financial goals aligned in this project? Do they form a feedback loop (i.e. more profit implies more social/environmental impact and vice-versa)?
- What are the key points of information uncertainty your project faces? How can this uncertainty be mitigated?
- How does this project align incentives to achieve its goals?
- Which customers or organizations does this project need to interface with in order to succeed? How can these incentives be mitigated?
- What are the downsides of this business model? Does it have any negative social or environmental consequences?
- Why are the project’s goals achievable in the next five years?
- How does this project scale? What are the barriers to scaling?
- Is there a cheap and easy way to experiment with the viability of this project?
- What would be the immediate next steps to launch this project? What resources do you need?