June 2022

Our MA in Climate Action Leadership cohort recently completed a course titled CALS 504: Modelling the Business Case for Climate Action. This was the last course before the completion of our Design Thinking Challenge for our year-long CALS 501: Leading Climate Action in Society course. 

The CALS 504 course made me think about our Design Thinking Challenge prototype in the context of the business case. If we were to build out a business case for our prototype, what would the conclusions be? I think one of the weaker aspects of our prototype is that we did not consider how it would be funded. The financial inputs would be significant. However, through the different phases of prototype development, we spent our time exploring software development, the school system and its curriculum, and cultural sensitivity. We did not, unfortunately, have time to interview business experts or potential funders.

In the absence of figuring out the costing and funding of our prototype, I decided to explore how we might have gone about this, given more time and resources for prototype development. After all, a business case can be viewed as a “guiding light” (Siegelaub & Herman, 2009, section 4) as a project moves forward over time. A business case is an important aspect of project development. Without a business case, an organization may waste resources on a project that does not aid the organization in fulfilling its objectives (Siegelaub & Herman, 2009, section 3)

We would need funds for software development, curriculum development, outreach to the school system, legal expertise, and administration and overhead. We would need to figure out an approximate dollar value for each of these budget items before bringing our prototype to potential funders. This would take a significant upfront effort, most likely inputs of time and energy which would not be compensated.

For a business case, we would also need to provide values for the potential benefits that our prototype would bring. This, I think, would prove more challenging than providing values for the costs of the prototype. In our CALS 504 course, we completed a business case analysis that looked at adaptation actions that could be implemented during heat waves to help the homeless population of Colwood, BC. In my project, I found that figuring out a dollar value for the benefits of the adaptation actions was much more difficult than assigning dollar values to the costs of the actions.

I think the most obvious funding mechanism would be through a foundation. We would need to find a foundation whose values aligned with that of our prototype, and who would be willing to invest a significant amount of money into its development. One consideration would be to find seed funding to develop a small pilot project, and then seek and secure further funding once the pilot has (hopefully) shown promise and success.

Another potential source of funding for development could be through a MITACS Accelerate internship. For this, we would need to find an organization willing to host an employee (who would be partially funded through MITACS) who would use their time to develop the prototype further, and ready it for market. Though there would likely need to be further funding to get the prototype fully to market, this pathway would provide a good start.

Lastly, we could consider crowdfunding as a way to fund the initial costs of development. Again, this could provide the money to test the prototype in a pilot phase before trying to secure further funding through a foundation.

A business case would help guide the vision of our prototype and would help us bring it to potential funders. It is an important component of bringing a project to fruition. We were not able to explore this aspect during the Design Thinking Challenge, but I am glad that I gained tools and insights into business case planning from the CALS 504 course that can be applied in my student and work life in the future.

References

Herman, B., & Siegelaub, J. M. (2009). Is this really worth the effort? The need for a business case. Project Management Institute. https://www.pmi.org/learning/library/need-business-case-6730