• Ongoing Projects
• Impact Panel

Startups can make significant contributions to environmental and climate protection. Through the Impact Panel research project, the University of Oldenburg and the Borderstep Institute are developing a new approach to systematically examine the long-term ecological, economic, and social impacts of startups.

Existing evaluations typically focus on individual funding programs, short time frames, and, above all, economic effects. As a result, policymakers, funding agencies, investors, and startup support organizations lack reliable data to align funding measures, investments, and support services in an impact-oriented manner.

Measuring the Long-Term Impacts of Startups

The Impact Panel project addresses this very gap. The goal is to develop a novel business panel that allows for the repeated study of the same startups over an extended period of time. The study will track both business development and environmental, economic, and social impacts, as well as factors that promote or hinder high effectiveness.

The panel is designed to include green startups as well as comparison and control groups, and to combine prospective impact assessments with the measurement of actual outcomes. To this end, a framework concept, a suitable data architecture, indicators for impact measurement, and a sampling and survey design will be developed. In addition, AI-supported methods for web analysis and data updating will be developed and tested. The concept will be tested in practice and evaluated in a pilot study.

Impact-Driven Funding and Investment

The long-term goal is to establish a robust and sustainable Impact Panel. In the future, this panel will enable the systematic measurement of the long-term impacts of startups, identify success factors, evaluate funding programs in a comparable manner, and better align political and practical decisions within the startup ecosystem with actual sustainability impacts.

At the same time, the project lays the groundwork for the long-term evolution of the Green Startup Report toward a monitoring system that is more impact- and longitudinal-oriented.