Attendees were treated to a showcase of innovative and inspiring ideas during the Impact Showroom. From an application that assists customers in developing more sustainable shopping habits to a platform that enables SBE students to consult on societal projects: there was a wide variety of ideas, 16 in total.
An esteemed jury consisting of Andrew Spitz (impact entrepreneur and creator of Frolic Studio), Christina Caljé (chair of the SBE advisory board and co-founder of the Impact Investment Group) and Tima Bansal (Professor of Sustainability and Strategy from Ivey Business School in Canada) selected three winning ideas. The teams that submitted these ideas received an award and will be supported with the further development and implementation of their idea. The audience selected another winner for the ‘Crowd’s choice award’.
Winning ideas
The Impact and Inspiration Award went to Tom Tetteroo for the idea to build a platform that connects people to do collective challenges by making them fun & easy: “CollAction”. Tom Tetteroo explains: "The Collective Action Problem, the phenomenon that people are reluctant to do something for a collective cause because they mainly feel a personal disadvantage, can be solved with an online environment. By cleverly dealing with social interactions, while showing that you can indeed make an impact with your group of friends, we can make sustainable action attractive. Ultimately, with CollAction, we hope to become the app in the Netherlands that people think of when they want to make their daily lives more sustainable, in a fun way."
The Education Award went to associate professor Jost Sieweke for the idea “AI in Education.” His course on crisis leadership in the VU Executive MBA program formed the inspiration for his idea. Jost Sieweke: “After teaching the course for the first time in 2022, I realized that teaching crisis leadership requires students to actually experience a crisis. I now aim to create highly realistic experiential learning opportunities for students to improve the effectiveness of my courses. For instance, in my “Leading through Crisis and Uncertainty” course in the Executive MBA, I developed a live simulation in which students worked on a real-life crisis for about 3 hours and were confronted with new information and unexpected developments. In contrast to most computer simulations, students did not have to choose between certain options, but they could make decisions in a group, and I flexibly reacted to their decisions (with the support of AI tools such as Chat GPT).”
The Collaboration award went to student Rijk Crolla for the idea “The Hand Project.” With corporate team events, Rijk and his team create real functional prosthetic hands for people in Africa, completely free of charge for the recipients. Rijk Crolla: “We believe that companies can do better than go laser game, or do some icebreakers. Research shows the benefits of combining team building with real tangible social impact. That's exactly what we do. In our events, a team will create real functional prosthetic hands for people in Africa. For these people, this is completely free of charge. By doing so, we combine corporate team building with real impact, for both the hand recipients and the teams participating.”
And finally, the Crowd’s choice Award went to Bas de Groot and Maarten de Groot for the idea “Unlocking the Power of Impact Transparency”. Bas de Groot: "We both work for a foundation that is developing an advanced impact measurement tool based entirely on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations." A better tool to measure impact is much needed, according to De Groot. "Less than 2.5% of the total global assets under management go to impact companies. That only a shocking 2.5% are invested with impact is because the asset management industry does not have access to a uniform standard for measuring impact. Although interest is growing, we believe developments are not moving fast enough."
Recap
We look back at an inspiring event and are excited to follow the further development of these impactful ideas!
Make sure to check out the other ideas on impactful business and economics submitted by SBE community members for the SBE Impact Showroom.
Would you like to know more about the Impact Showroom or about our research? Contact science communicator Yrla van de Ven, y.f.van.de.ven@vu.nl or 06-26512492.