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SDG Platforms as Strategic Innovation Through Partnerships

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Abstract

This paper examines organizational use of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and why private organizations are using multi-stakeholder SDG platforms as a strategic tool for achieving the goals. Whereas the SDGs’ predecessors, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), were specifically formulated for governmental adoption, the SDGs stand apart in inviting diverse stakeholders, including private industry, to participate in sustainable development. Literature is emerging about how private industry can engage in the SDG framework. We aim to contribute to the sustainability and cross-sector partnership literatures by examining the motivations of organizations that partner into SDG platforms. This research started as an exploratory study to understand how corporations use the SDGs strategically, and we identified platforms as a means of strategic corporate engagement with the SDGs. Our findings are based on semi-structured interviews and documents, and they focus on four Danish SDG platforms: UNLEASH, Hello Science, Fra Filantropi til Forretning (From Philanthropy to Business), and the SDG Accelerator. The findings suggest that speed, impact, and scaling of SDG innovations are features of SDG platforms that motivate cross-sector, boundary-spanning collaboration. We suggest that the larger ambition of the platforms is to shift the value framing from profit outputs to SDG impacts and outcomes, ultimately imagined as a business landscape based on SDG innovation; and we propose a model to reflect the SDG platform process structure.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. We would also like to thank all the interviewees and the SDG platforms for their time and support.

Funding

This study was made possible by funding from the Danish Innovation Fund for Lara Anne Blasberg’s Postdoctoral Research (Grant Number 7039-00043B) and by the Copenhagen Business School’s MSC World Class Research Environment ‘Governing Responsible Business’ fellowship granted to Amanda Williams.

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  1. International Institute for Management Development, Ch. de Bellerive 23, P.O. Box 915, 1001, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Amanda Williams

  2. Department of Management, Society and Communications, Copenhagen Business School, Dalgas Have 15, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Lara Anne Blasberg

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  1. Amanda Williams
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Correspondence to Lara Anne Blasberg.

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Williams, A., Blasberg, L.A. SDG Platforms as Strategic Innovation Through Partnerships. J Bus Ethics 180, 1041–1057 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-022-05194-y

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