ESRC Festival of Social Science workshop: Getting sustainable values into a sustainable business

Running your own business is hard, but it can be especially difficult for people who want to set up a ‘green’ sustainable company. How do small businesses, micro businesses and self-employed people combine their sustainability goals with their commercial objectives?

This workshop will help you explore how to scale up your environmental and social impact, whilst running your business and maintaining your profits.

Researchers from The Open University and The University of Oxford and communications specialists Climate Outreach have been working on these issues with small businesses and business support providers. In parallel, a team from Middlesex University has been conducting new research on social businesses.  At this event we will introduce you to their key findings, before breaking the audience up into smaller facilitated groups. In these groups we will discuss how the issue of sustainability affects your work, what (if any) tensions you face when trying to unite your sustainability and commercial goals, and finally how these tensions could be overcome by adopting a values-based approach.

In partnership with the Impact Hub Islington, this event will build on a collaboration between the ESRC Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), and the ESRC Impact Acceleration Award project, ‘Growing Greener: Creating a New Values-based Environmental Engagement Toolkit for SME Intermediaries’ (2018-19).

Register for this FREE event