Strategisches Leuchten: Leadership & Business Sustainability.

According to the Institute for Sustainability Leadership at Cambridge University, “Companies are increasingly realising the inherent risks of doing business on a global scale. Their reliance on diverse natural resources for raw materials, an international customer base and heavy use of information and communication technologies must be carefully managed so that growth plans are not undermined. In addition, companies must seize the new commercial opportunities that arise from overcoming challenges and be flexible enough to adapt their business models accordingly to cope with the global changes ahead.” The sooner start-ups integrate new business sustainability strategies into their business models and corporate culture, the better they will be able to respond to future market changes. For this reason, we invited experts and start-ups to our Sustainable Start-up Workshop to show how concrete strategies can be used to identify opportunities and minimise risks.

The feedback from our participants has reinforced our belief that both the workshop format and the topic of business sustainability are of great importance for (early-stage) start-ups: “We particularly enjoyed the event as it was held in an open and friendly atmosphere. The speakers were also excellently chosen and were able to give us many new insights,” says Julius Dannhoff from Fish’N’Bricks. Our speaker and PhD student at the KIT Institute for Entrepreneurship, Technology Management and Innovation (EnTechnon) Christin Eckerle emphasised: “If start-ups address their social and environmental impact from the outset, they can create value for a wider range of stakeholders, including investors, employees, customers and society. The UN SDGs are a very helpful and recognised framework for defining your own strategic sustainable goals and communicating them to the outside world.” Our speaker Anja Lehner from Valupack GmbH convinced the audience that start-ups can strategically tackle the complex challenge of sustainability with a comprehensive analysis, clear goals and measures.

We are delighted that we were able to raise awareness of this topic in our start-up community. If you missed this workshop, we cordially invite you to attend our TECHimpulse Circular Economy – Navigating Sustainable Growth on 13 March 2024. There you can learn more about sustainable business models, the development of sustainable products and the role of IT security in this area.