Leading Companies Meet to Design Breakthrough Business Models of the Future

(Cambridge, 10 November) – The UN Global Compact annual LEAD Symposium brought together representatives from LEAD companies with exponential thought-leaders and innovators to explore how breakthrough innovation has the potential to enable new, more sustainable business models.

Organized in collaboration with partners Volans, PA Consulting, Singularity University and Innovation Arts, the two-day event entitled Breakthrough Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) featured interactive sessions aimed at  scaling up the pace of radical innovation and market transformation required to achieve the SDGs.

At the Symposium , 10 UN Global Compact LEAD companies, as part of the Breakthrough Innovation Challenge, reached a significant milestone by defining an ambitious challenge for their companies to solve. This year-long programme, developed in collaboration with the DO School, brings together next-generation intrapreneurs from leading multinational companies to evaluate disruptive technologies and use them to build future sustainable business models.

Companies in the Challenge aim to  generate financial and societal value while addressing themes embedded in the SDGs including education, food, water, energy, gender inequality and health. Challenges that were identified include:

• Improving food production and safety by developing advanced detection and decontamination solutions and combining  biotechnology with Internet of Things and Big Data solutions.
• Creating a collaborative work platform that inspires employees to contribute solutions to the challenges of gender inequality, environmental degradation and mental illness.
• Using digital technology to create a sharing-economy model platform to create clean and affordable energy for all.

Over the coming months, the participants in the Challenge will incorporate insights emerging on the Project Breakthrough platform, engage with thought-leaders and technologists, refine their challenges, and prototype and test products and business models.  A call for students and others to submit ideas to help the intrapreneurs shape solutions to the challenges will begin in January. The solutions developed by the companies as well as the steps they have taken to implement the solutions will be presented in September 2017.

• Visit the 2016 LEAD Symposium microsite.
• Join the Breakthrough Innovation work of the UN Global Compact and partners.
• Learn about the Breakthrough Innovation Challenge.
• Explore the work of Global Compact LEAD.