Spearheading the B Corp movement in Hong Kong with Innovation Workshopping – A fruitful B Corp Quarterly Meet-Up

 

At Future Green, we are proud of our hard-earned B Corp certification. As one of the leading voices in food sustainability in the region, getting certified was a no brainer, and despite the rigorous and intensive process, this only goes to show that we are committed to embed sustainability in every aspect of our work. But we are not the only ones. There are 24 certified B Corps in Hong Kong! Every quarter, we all meet to exchange best practices, challenges and ideas to move forward faster. Our kind hosts, Happiness Capital, welcomed us this month at their venue in Sheung Wan for an evening of peer-learning, ideation and, most importantly, fun! 

 

Wait… what’s a B Corp? 

A B Corp is a business that balances profit and purpose, legally obligated to consider the impact of their decisions on stakeholders and the environment. The certification process covers five key impact areas: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment and Customers.

 

Identifying challenges

We all gathered with a shared vision for sustainable business practice. We ran our popular Lightning Decision Jam innovation workshop in order to address today’s challenge: How can we increase the number of B Corps in Hong Kong. It was an opportunity not just to voice challenges but to drum up adaptive strategies, and transforming roadblocks into stepping stones.

 

With three main questions in mind being the growth of certified B Corps in Hong Kong, diversification of companies getting certified and a broadened reach and influence, everyone enthusiastically took part in our Sailboat exercise to pinpoint the main challenges we face. Among the three groups, we extracted one main challenge: leveraging B Corp to bring value to companies and how to make the benefits of being a B Corp stand out. 

After categorizing and narrowing down challenges as well as fueling up on delicious plant-based wraps and salads from our member Orka, we ensured energy levels remained high and carried on. All participants went back to the drawing board and were given time to ideate and come up with solutions to address the challenges. 

 

Heidi and her team at Future Green did a marvelous job in facilitating a diverse group of senior participants from assessing the opportunities & challenges and then coming up with committed actions.  A great balance between convergent thinking and divergent thinking, between small-group discussion and plenary exchanges, between left-brain critical thinking and right-brain creative ideation, etc.  In particular, I love using the visuals of “Sail and Anchor” [Sailboat]  to engage the participants in search of new directions and making commitments to move forward!

Lee Gilbert – Education For Good

 

Solutions ideation 

 

We gathered many new and innovative ideas to promote, grow and sustain the movement. The importance of communicating the B Corp certification surfaced, not only within our community but also to the general public and different stakeholders such as bigger companies and retailers. More cross-collaboration between B Corps such as preferential rates between us was also put forward. One popular suggestion was to use B Corp in the same sentence as ESG – we loved that given Hong Kong is a finance hub and therefore many businesses are obliged to be reporting centric!

To grow awareness, participants suggested a communication strategy aimed at both the government and institutions with the drafting of a white paper and the general public with a strengthened social media presence including collaboration with influencers, games and events as well as and learning from overseas successful B Corps. Business-wise, getting listed to drive the cause and incentivise bigger companies to invest in B Corps was also mentioned.

Last but not least, each participant voted on the solutions they found the most innovative and wanted to commit to and implement. We were all able to align and identify on what to prioritize and tackle.

 

This great innovation workshop ended with news and updates from the team at B Lab reiterating the importance of promoting and growing the movement across Hong Kong. We ended on a high with drinks, food and more sharing. See you at the next B Corp Quarterly Meet-Up!

Want to learn more about becoming a B Corp – get in touch today, email us: hello@futuregreen.global.