9. SuMO24_Sustainable Impact Project

This module is a part of the master’s program "Sustainable Management and Operations" to enable participants acquire essential know-how and skills relating to practical aspects of impact-driven transformation and relevant skills in professional project management of transformations.

In this module, participants will work alone or in small groups to identify a sustainability-related or impact issue that is in context to their or a third company (best case: at least one team member should be an employee of that company), set up a project, define a transformation journey, derive solutions or measurements, and prepare an implementation plan for these solutions or measurements.

Towards the end of the module, the participants will summarize their sustainability impact project and present their project in front of an audience.

Further details on the sustainability impact project: Your task will be to develop a concept for a sustainability-related project that is financially viable and actively delivers tangible social or environmental value. Your project must be aligned with the corporate objectives, business operations, existing sustainability initiatives, and external/ contextual conditions. Each individual or team will have to pitch their project in the initial months of the module several times and create a project summary with a tentative timeline for project milestones.

For the Impact Project the methodology of “Impact Business Design” is the key pathway with all relevant tools and templates.

Following the kick-off or transparency phase, the participants will work on project set up, impact circle, stakeholder mapping etc. The participants will have check-in events in each module session to answer any open questions and to help them stay on track. On the last day of the module, each individual or project team will present the result of the project after 11 months.

Examples or ideas for possible impact projects:

• Develop a new sustainability and business strategy.
• Support a company or product transformation to all aspects of sustainability.
• Develop a strategy to get ready for a circular business.
• Build up a new sustainable supply chain strategy and transformation.
• Build up a new sustainable business model.
• Develop and design a new sustainable packaging strategy.
• Transform your company from profit first to impact first.