TRANSFORM is a vibrant global network of researchers and practitioners working with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to design sustainability experiments and build capacity to accelerate innovation, leading to more resilient, inclusive, and low-carbon cities.

TRANSFORM takes a step-by-step approach as it explores the highest impact pathways to sustainable transformation in SMEs. Each step learns from the last and helps us understand sustainable transformations for resilient local business.

The first steps of our project are to create an interactive database that serves as a repository of case studies highlighting transformational practices and business models for urban sustainability and resilience. We are developing a framework to identify, categorize, and synthesize knowledge on SMEs across various cities and will communicate our findings through visual and interactive formats to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.

We seek to illustrate the interdependencies between small and medium-sized business models and urban space and map the multiple effects emanating from business practices that contribute to more sustainable development pathways. As we advance the conceptualization of business models in urban contexts, we can better support businesses as they innovate, advance, and radically redesign their functions in local spaces to contribute to the transformation of cities into sustainable and resilient systems.

TRANSFORM will co-create an immersive, interactive, and flexible capacity-building process with its partners. This process will draw on the transformative practices and business models database to co-produce training modules with entrepreneurs and urban stakeholders in the various cities. The capacity-building activities will present transformative practices and models through visuals, such as animations and field trips.

We will provide targeted incentives for SMEs to conduct sustainability experiments that drive the adoption of transformative business models. By providing financial and technical support for these experiments, project researchers will be able to study the experiments from the outset, evaluate their success or failure, and capture the social, environmental and economic impact of the SMEs’ experiments.

Based on the database, capacity-building, and experimentation outcomes, we will develop an action-oriented and data-driven toolkit that will support government at multiple levels, small businesses, and civil society groups to accelerate the diffusion and scaling up of the sustainability solutions identified during the TRANSFORM process.

Throughout the project, we focus on the policy relevance of the project, including advising municipal, provincial, and federal governments in each country on SME-specific sustainability innovation strategies. We will map the socio-institutional enabling context for sustainability innovation at multiple governance scales and analyze future policy pathways that will incentivize SMEs to engage in sustainability transformations. Working in collaboration with local partners, including research and action networks, non-governmental organizations, and governments, we will identify the critical elements of effective, efficient, and forward-looking national policies and strategies for transformational sustainability innovation.

Project website: https://transformcities.ca

Tel.: +49 721 608-22336
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