Accelerating sustainability entrepreneurship experiments in local spaces

Project: Other

Project participants

Description

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are responsible for up to 60 percent of Canada's commercial carbon dioxide emissions, employ 90 percent of the total private workforce and created approximately 52 percent of private sector GDP by 2015. Despite promising stories of social innovation and sustainability leadership by SMEs, recent research suggests that the majority have little interest in facilitating accelerated transitions to environmental sustainability. Given the ongoing international negotiations on climate change and the United Nations' announcement of sustainable development targets (2015), it is clear that incremental approaches to sustainability will not be sufficient to achieve necessary long-term transformation outcomes. We need a more targeted, evidence-based approach to the involvement of small businesses, which help to overcome significant capacity gaps.
"TRANSFORM: Accelerating Experiments on Sustainability in Local Areas" will address this challenge by activating a vibrant global network of centres of research and practice (in 8 countries, including 11 universities and 14 non-academic partners) that will help SMEs to build capacity for the transition to fundamentally sustainable business models and practices (such as social entrepreneurship, non-profit enterprises, cooperatives and carbon neutral enterprises). TRANSFORM will work closely with SMEs in this process: 1) implement an interactive capacity-building process that will enable SMEs to explore transformative approaches to sustainability; 2) cultivate, monitor and evaluate sustainability experiments in the small business community; 3) develop and disseminate a tailored transformation toolkit targeted at business, government and civil society actors; and 4) draw on national and international examples to guide the design and implementation of Canada's sustainability and innovation policies at the federal, provincial and municipal levels.
AcronymTRANSFORM
StatusActive
Period01.04.1831.03.25

Research outputs

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Productivity and the extensive margins of trade in German manufacturing firms
  2. Extraterritorial Asylum Processing. The Libya-Niger Emergency Transit Mechanism
  3. Using ectomycorrhizae to improve the restoration of Neotropical coastal zones
  4. Hygrochastic capsule dehiscence in New Zealand alpine Veronica (Plantaginaceae)
  5. Walter Benjamin, Il compito del traduttore, edizione critica e nuova traduzione
  6. Action anticipation based on an agent's epistemic state in toddlers and adults
  7. Econometric Studies with Integrated Micro-data from German Official Statistics
  8. Möglichkeiten und Grenzen der Steuerung gesellschaftlicher Naturverhältnisse
  9. Stratigraphische Begriffe für das Quartär des Periglazialraums in Deutschland
  10. Sustainable Creative Cities: the role of the arts in globalised urban contexts
  11. Sozial-ökologisch ausgerichtete Konjunkturpolitik in und nach der Corona-Krise
  12. Life Cycle and Supply Chain Information in Environmental Management Accounting
  13. Unternehmerische Nachhaltigkeitsinnovationen durch nachhaltiges Unternehmertum
  14. Government Strategies to Promote Corporate Environmental Management Accounting
  15. Metaphors and metonymies and their impact in mathematical classroom discourses
  16. Die Wahrheit der Realitätszeichen zwischen Phantasie, Deckerinnerung und Trauma
  17. Politische Einflussmöglichkeiten auf die Entwicklung nachhaltiger Geldanlagen
  18. Reaching and recruiting Turkish migrants for a clinical trial through Facebook
  19. Versuch zu Formen von Öffentlichkeit in lokalen Bildungs- und Sorgelandschaften
  20. CSR zwischen unternehmerischer Vergangenheitsbewältigung und Zukunftsgestaltung
  21. Wandel des Staates als Herausforderung für die Didaktik der Politischen Bildung
  22. A welfare analysis of the electricity transmission regulatory regime in Germany
  23. Nachhaltige Entwicklung ländlicher Räume durch Feminisierung der Landwirtschaft?
  24. News, sex, and the fight between corporate control and human communication online
  25. The Environmental and Economic Effects of European Emissions Trading in Germany