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Borderstep forms a research alliance with ESCP Business School’s Chair for Corporate Sustainability: With increasing sustainability awareness among consumers and industry and tightening regulation of corporate sustainability reporting and management, the question of how to assess and consider the environmental and social impacts of business activities is increasingly becoming a competitive factor. Consideration of sustainability performance and impact is thus not only a must for established companies, but must also be taken into account as early as the product and business model development stage for start-ups and young companies.

At the STARbowl event Impact Business Models: Measure What Matters!, jointly organized by ESCP Business School Berlin and Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability, we shed light on how impact assessment and management can be successfully integrated into the business model development of start-ups with practitioners, academics and policy makers. STAR is ESCP’s new Sustainability Transformation & Applied Research Centre, which was founded by Professor Florian Lüdeke-Freund and Jan Ehlers in early 2023.

Borderstep has been collaborating with Professor Florian Lüdeke-Freund from ESCP for several years. Founded in 1819, the ESCP is the oldest business school in the world still in existence today. This joint STARbowl event marks the start of an important research alliance between Borderstep and ESCP in the area of sustainability.

Joint practice-oriented research projects

Prof. Dr. Florian Lüdeke-Freund, Professor for Corporate Sustainability at ESCP Business School Berlin and Head of the Chair, and Prof. Dr. Klaus Fichter, founder and director of the Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability, express their vision to further advance the field of impact measurement and sustainable business model development in joint practice-oriented research projects in the future.

Prof. Dr. Klaus Fichter, founder and director of the Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability:
In our collaboration with Professor Lüdeke-Freund, we will focus on business model transformation and how impact business models can be effectively supported and scaled. Impact business models intertwine social or environmental goals with core business strategy and ensure that economic and social value creation are combined. Impact business models aim to create what we call a ‘double dividend’: an economic and a social benefit. We bring together two important but previously rather separate areas of research: sustainable business models and the assessment and measurement of business impact. With the new research alliance with ESCP, we are taking sustainable business research to the next level of excellence.

Research alliance to combine two important but yet hardly connected fields of research

Prof. Dr. Florian Lüdeke-Freund, Head of the Chair for Corporate Sustainability at ESCP Business School Berlin, and Academic Director of STAR:
The goal of our alliance is to combine two important but yet hardly connected fields of research. Research on sustainable business models on the one hand, and research on impact measurement and management on the other hand. There are high expectations for the positive effects of new business models on the natural environment and society. But we are lacking tools to measure and manage these effects on the level of business models. Our alliance aims at developing practically useful methods and tools that are based on cutting-edge research.

More: Interview in “The Choice” (ESCP publication) – please click here.

Event: Information & registration

Date & time: November 13, 18:00 – 21:00, registration starts at 17:00.
Venue: Forum, ESCP Business School, Campus Berlin, Heubnerweg 8-10, 14059 Berlin
Language: The event will be held in English. Participation is free of charge. The number of places is limited. First come, first served!
More information: Please click here.
RSVP: To register please click here.

Event: Agenda

17.00 | Registration

18.00 | Welcome
Words from the ESCP Berlin Dean, Prof. Frank Jacob

18:15 | Opening statements

• Professor Florian Lüdeke-Freund from ESCP Business School on Sustainable Business Models.
• Professor Klaus Fichter, Director of Borderstep Institute on Best Practices in Impact Management.
• Lucas Gerrits from the start-up ZukunftMoor will provide inspiration for the subsequent Fishbowl-Discussion and the Moving Impact Forum.

18.40 | Fishbowl-Discussion
Moderation: Prof. Dr. Klaus Fichter, Borderstep, and Prof. Dr. Florian Lüdeke-Freund, ESCP

19.15 | Moving Impact Forum: Find out more and ask questions to our experts

ESCP STAR: At this table, you have a chance to learn more about ESCP’s newest impact initiative, the center’s upcoming events, programs, and activities, and enter into an exchange on topics around research transfer, new educational formats, and community building for practitioners and professionals in the sustainability and impact arena.

Facilitator: Anastasia Shevchenko, ESCP STAR

Impact Community: We will introduce the “Community for Impact Management and Measurement” (CIMM) and its mission to enhance impact competency through networking, research, knowledge transfer, and practical experimentation. We invite everyone to actively participate in building the CIMM Community, as your input and engagement are crucial to achieving our vision of advancing impact management and measurement in Germany.

Facilitator: Dr. Thomas Neumann, Borderstep Institute

Rethinking the Sustainable Business Canvas: At this table, we will discuss and evaluate the Sustainable Business Model Canvas and ask how it can be further developed and improved to serve as a collaborative tool for impact business model design.

Facilitator: Alexandra Widrat, Borderstep Institute

Estimating the CO2 reduction potential of startups: We will gain insight into the GHG & Impact Estimator, a tool designed to estimate the CO2 reduction potential of startups. Using a specific assessment case, we discuss the challenges in the context of Climate Impact Assessment.

Facilitator: Tim Grothey, Borderstep Institute

ZukunftMoor – Impact of wet peatlands: We are a startup specializing in agriculture on wet peatlands. Through the cultivation of each hectare, we annually mitigate 40 tons of CO2. Join us in discussing how we manage our impact.

Facilitator: Lucas Gerrit, Start-up ZukunftMoor

Making climate protection investable for startups: Borderstep, together with ImpactNexus and SDG Investments, is developing highly automated tools for assessing the climate protection and sustainability potential of start-ups. How can you go beyond reporting? How can you create a positive impact?

Facilitator: Dr. Constanze Trautwein, ImpactNexus (Borderstep Research Fellow)

19.45 | Closing statements

20.00 | Get together and networking