Startups: The Forgotten Piece of The Puzzle in The Sustainability Debate

This informal CPD article Startups: The Forgotten Piece of The Puzzle in The Sustainability Debate was provided by Birmingham Enterprise Community, supporting entrepreneurs from across the world through every stage of the entrepreneurial journey.

Our industrial revolutions and economic development over the past decades have happened at a cost to our wider environment, ecosystems and biodiversity and resulted in huge inequalities between nations and within nations. How long have we got left of this ‘business as usual’?

Our global challenges are also opportunities, opportunities to do things differently, and better. The Business and Sustainable Development Commission put a price onto this, calculating if we move business within the Sustainable Development Goals, we could unlock a 12 trillion dollar market. A new market grounded on new ventures, partnerships and open innovation and collaboration.

We are lucky that in the UK there is a huge push now to help businesses transition business models and practices to much more sustainable options. But what about the new businesses that haven’t started yet and don’t need help transitioning but actually starting in the right way? The yearly GOV.uk statistics show that between 500,000 – 700,000 new startup businesses are launched in the UK every year. Many of these are providing viable solutions to our challenges within the climate crisis, yet many are producing products and services that are not sustainable, in their practices or in their ability to survive the future of resource deprivation and increasing inequality.

The reality: All startups should be sustainability startups. Not just for the future of the planet but to actually stand the test of changing business. However, we can’t just expect these businesses to know what to do and how to do it, there is a huge lack of support at the very beginning of business journeys. Commonly we are hearing in the startup space: “Start the business then worry about sustainability later”. Instead, we should be focusing on sustainability first. The easiest and most practical solution is to embed right at the start when business plans are being finalised, and long term planning starts.

We currently think too short-term, our current business models think maybe 5-10 years ahead, but that isn’t an example of a sustainable business model. The turnaround time on technology is so fast yet not fast enough, we rush to the market with new innovations. How can we make sure that no new inventions will be introduced to the market that will cause damage we then have to find solutions for in 100 years from now?

Think about the journey of a startup, commonly, they join an incubator or accelerator to get them fit and ready to launch. The number of UK-based startup accelerators and incubators has doubled in the past five years to 750, according to a new report. The study from the Centre for Entrepreneurs (CfE) found that founders had access to start up support programmes across all the local enterprise partnership areas in England.

Most startups consider the contribution of the incubator or accelerator they attended to have been significant or even vital to their success. Accelerator participation is positively associated with startup survival, employee growth, and funds raised. Companies that attend accelerators raise 44% more money than those that don’t. They are also 75% more valuable. (Beauhurst).

However, business is changing. Are accelerators and incubators keeping up? Between both incubators and accelerators: training, mentoring and workshops are usually one of the key offerings. In the face of a very real climate crisis, is there training and support for businesses trying to navigate to a much more sustainable business model that takes into account sector-specific, region-specific and global changes?

We want to find out. If not, why not?

Our goal is for every accelerator or incubator to have an intermediate level of education around the climate crisis and sustainable business models so that their businesses are ready for the future economy.

We hope this article was helpful. For more information from the Birmingham Enterprise Community, please visit their CPD Member Directory page. Alternatively, please visit the CPD Industry Hubs for more CPD articles, courses and events relevant to your Continuing Professional Development requirements.