MVO Vlaanderen - The Argonauts - Innovation 'at your service'

Sustatool

2020

Brussels

Government

Business design

Sustainable innovation with Sustatool

MVO Vlaanderen, an initiative of the Flemish Government, supports Flemish companies in sustainable entrepreneurship. MVO Vlaanderen was looking for a partner to improve its services to companies by, on the one hand, optimising its online sustainability tool, the Sustatool and, on the other hand, by providing workshops on sustainable innovation and entrepreneurship. Route 2030 and The Argonauts have joined forces to this end from two different angles: innovation and sustainability.

Sara Vermeulen

Route 2030 - Sustainable Development Expert

'Do not underestimate the impact sustainability will have on the innovative capacity of companies.'

Challenge

Small and medium-sized enterprises do not always find the time and resources to work on sustainability in a structural manner. They find it difficult to find their way in the labyrinth of sustainability concepts such as the Sustainable Development Goals, B-corp, GRI, ISO 2600, etc. One of the problems we want to solve with this project is to make the broader themes around sustainability better known to entrepreneurs and to guide them in this. The Sustatool guides entrepreneurs through the opportunities that these sustainable challenges can offer to innovate.

To tackle this challenge, MVO Vlaanderen asked The Argonauts and Route 2030 to use design thinking and co-creation to improve the User Experience (UX) of the Sustatool website and to redesign the online and offline workshops linked to the tool. The most important starting points were:

What can we learn from the already delivered Sustatool projects?
What can we learn from the already delivered Sustatool projects?
What can we learn from the already delivered Sustatool projects?
What are similar/strengthening initiatives?

Sara Vermeulen

Route 2030 - Sustainable Development Expert

"Do not underestimate the impact sustainability will have on the innovative capacity of companies"

Xavier Speelveld

The Argonauts

'The cooperation between a sustainability agency, innovation agency and government was a success formula to achieve a good result quickly.'

Approach & results

Central to the guidance of the companies is the so-called ‘hybrid sustainability journey’. This is the journey the company takes through the various steps of the Sustatool. It is a personalized trajectory that takes place both offline and online. The company can choose to:

To complete the process completely online
Go through the process online and offline
Go through the route online and, if desired, switch to the offline route on the way.

We have started performing online testing with about 10 (potential) users of the Sustatool to evaluate their behaviour and navigation on the current website (empathy with the end users). We soon found that entrepreneurs quickly lost their way in the (too) complex step-by-step plan of the tool. Other needs also surfaced, such as the demand for online assistance and facilitation. In this way, we arrived at an improved customer journey that the entrepreneur can go through intuitively in order to set up sustainability projects within the company.

In our connected society, digital technology plays an increasingly important role. Converting a classic face-to-face training programme to a hybrid form involves more than just adding a few online tools. After all, the intention is to harmonise online and offline learning activities as well as possible into a ‘blended learning experience’. The contact moments therefore change in character..

Result

In October, the new Sustatool will be delivered and the workshops, which have been given a new look, will start with the participating companies.

Xavier Speelveld

The Argonauts

" The cooperation between a sustainability agency, innovation agency and government was a success formula to achieve a good result quickly."

In Cooperation With