As a little girl, I wanted to become an astronaut. That did not happen. And that’s ok. Often our first goals will stay unreached, our first endeavours unsuccessful. But the world is full of different paths that are worth going – you won’t know if you don’t try, however. The very same applies to starting and running a business.

The best business case may not occur to you right at the beginning. This is particularly typical for start-ups whose founders come from a technical background. Not because of a lack in business skills. But because they start with a material, a process, or an algorithm, and then investigate who might have a need for it. Which takes much more effort and patience than starting with identifying a need first and then experimenting on how to serve this need with a suitable technology.

I assist start-ups and medium sized companies with that business part of their innovative ideas. My focus lies within the Circular Economy and with sustainability projects in general. There are two reasons why. First, I think we need many more circular solutions in our everyday products, production processes, and services. And second, I believe there is a lot of potential for great solutions out there, but that there often is the challenge of wrapping them up in a working business case.

Running a sustainable product or service also means that the business case must be able to sustain itself economically. Otherwise, it will probably never take off and scale. It may not be rocket science, but it is incredibly exciting, and you never stop learning something new. So instead of exploring new worlds out there, I explore new fascinating ways on how to keep our earth the beautiful and diverse pale blue dot that we call our home.

Janine Neuf