Towards Triple Impact - Toolbox for Analysing Sustainable Ventures in Developing Countries

Project Context

Sustainable ventures can make a significant contribution to poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability. These innovative business initiatives and activities manage to improve human well-being and the environment on a profitable basis (people, planet, profit). In doing so, they contribute to decoupling economic growth and improvements in well-being from natural resource use in ways that are replicable. So far, however, there are no established tools for analyzing sustainable ventures. Such tools would enable systematic management, targeted support systems and improved outcomes.

Project Objective

The project’s objective was to provide tools for the analysis of sustainable ventures. The target group are initiatives that support sustainable ventures; donor programmes, award schemes, private and public investors, professional education programs, policy makers and others. They can use the tools to guide decision-making processes, for example to design loan and grant proposal requirements or to compare the impact of diverse initiatives. In this way, the tools help to systematically identify, evaluate, manage and promote sustainable ventures.

Project Output

Three questions appear over and again in the process of managing sustainable ventures:

• Where are opportunities to create value by meeting needs better and more efficiently?
• What factors determine the success of the venture?
• What are the costs and benefits of the venture for business, society and the environment?

The document introduces a toolbox that helps to answer these questions.