April 13, 2023
It was an evening marked by transitions: How do we work on societal transitions by building business with impact? It was good to gather so many different perspectives in one room and to know that all of our partners and stakeholders are working on these transitions in their own way.
Bas van Abel (founder of Fairphone) kicked off with an inspirational talk on sustainable mobile phones and gave us insights about the world behind this innovative concept. He taught us how he made a difference as a small actor in a traditional industry and made progress towards a tipping point where fair and sustainable materials and production become an expectation rather than an exception.
Interesting conversations about how we can best contribute to the relevant transitions ensued at the dinner table. We concluded that most transitions are linked and by partnering up in public-private partnerships we can make a bigger difference and speed up transitions. Also, if the conditions are right, doing business and making impact can go hand in hand.
Prof. Dr. Karen Maas guided us through the issue of whether measuring impact in the context of transitions is valuable. Why do we measure impact, how to go about it, and is measuring in a quantified way always the right approach? So much can be measured, but ask yourself, is what you measure valuable and does it add anything to what you are trying to achieve? Karen gave us concrete tips and advice on how we can make measuring impact valuable. Like starting with a why, start measuring, being adaptive, proud, and honest. During dinner, we discussed how these lessons apply to the transitions we all work on.
It was great to see what happens when many of our partners and stakeholders get together in one room again, and having interesting and in-depth conversations about transitions in both the private and public sides of building business with impact.
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