Innovation Partner Project with Tomorrow Strategy Co.
2024
In an Industry Innovation Partner project (IIP), my team and I collaborated with Tomorrow Strategy Co. (TSC), a business strategy consulting firm dedicated to cultivating high-quality strategies. TSC aims to expand its services to include Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices and sustainability in 2024.
Our journey began with a clear challenge: ‘How can we enhance employee engagement and strategy by focusing on sustainability and ESG principles?’ This question guided our initial research and understanding of TSC’s vision, however this transformed throughout the project. With a diverse team of students, ranging between business, engineering, communications and design disciplines, we were able to navigate the complexities embedded in TSC’s challenge and generate a unique proposition that targeted underlying issues.
A key insight we presented to our partner was that TSC should consider themselves a part of their own target market. When we asked them about their current efforts in the ESG space, it became clear that there is minimal work being done at present. Instead, they have plans and intentions to engage with ESG but as a small business, increasing client numbers and revenue was still their main priority. Emphasising scalability as a driving force, we questioned whether the primary goal of our final solution should be to attract new clients or to enhance their current offerings. We proposed that improving their existing offerings would naturally lead to gaining new clients over time. This led us to a crucial reframe of our challenge question, pivoting to,
‘How might we integrate ESG principles into our existing offering to create a profitable, easily digestible, and implementable product?’
Our solution is a comprehensive digital platform designed to identify SMEs strategic gaps. This encompasses a gap test, performance tracking and a data scoop - which compares an SME to its competitors. The Gap test specifically measures five benchmarks being; environmental, social, governance, finance and ambition. These benchmarks also identify the short-fallings of an SME’s strategy that TSC can address. The platform also includes the back-office side for TSC to view all collected data from the gap test and the data scoop. Meanwhile, the client facing interface allows business owners to access their performance metrics, test results, market data and goal completion. While the data scoop was out of our scope for the 9-week project timeframe, we recommend TSC to create this tool to gather and analyse broader market trends and identify where clients stand within the market. We tested our platform with CEOs and other C-Suite members of local SMEs, enabling us to refine our proposition and envision its future implications.
Our partners at TSC gave us highly positive feedback, recognising the potential of our project to expand their client base and boost profits through enhanced data collection. By enabling TSC to make informed decisions and offer tailored recommendations, our project helps improve operational efficiency and supports the SME market in adopting sustainable business practices. This strategic approach encourages widespread sustainability, setting new industry benchmarks. As more SMEs integrate these practices, we anticipate a shift towards business models that prioritise ESG considerations, providing a competitive edge and contributing to broader societal and environmental benefits.
