The consortium of Erasmus+ KA2: Knowledge Alliance project “Knowledge Alliance for Business Opportunity Recognition in SDGs (SDG4BIZ) gathered in Helsinki, Finland for the annual project meeting, organized by the project coordinator, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences between 23-25 May 2022 with the participation of 25 researchers and project team members from higher education institutions, companies, and research and innovation agencies in the partnership.

SDG4BIZ in a nutshell

Funded by the Erasmus+ Programme, the SDG4BIZ Knowledge Alliance project creates, tests, and disseminates a curriculum and training material on recognizing and realizing the business opportunities in SDGs. The project enhances the awareness of business growth potential in SDGs and serves the innovation capabilities of EU companies and the competence needs of European universities.

The following organizations form the partnership:

• Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Finland (coordinator)
• Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Finland
• Slovak University of Technology, Slovakia
• Yaşar University, Turkey
• Brainplus, Austria
• Itslearning, Finland
• Fondazione Fenice, İtaly
• Tknika, Spain

Highlights of the programme

On the first day of the meeting, the consortium organized a workshop on the main output of the project- “SDG4BIZ curriculum” to analyze and evaluate the content and the flow of each module. The curriculum has been developed by the partnership in a collaborative method over nine months and includes 5 modules. The result will be tested and piloted over It’s learning, an online learning platform. The curriculum focuses on sustainable development goals (SDGs) in business opportunity recognition, shared value business opportunity recognition, entrepreneurship & innovation in the field of food and agriculture, cities and communities, energy and materials, health and wellbeing.

On the second day of the programme, the consortium organized a symposium entitled ‘Business Opportunity Recognition in Sustainable Development Goals’ in which module leaders, researchers, and managers from partner organization discussed business opportunity recognition and sustainability themes with a specific focus on SDG4BIZ curriculum modules.

Next steps…

The consortium will be finalizing the curriculum content co-creation process and move forward to piloting of new modules with participant researchers, students and professionals.  Information about the project, its outputs, events and activities can be found on  https://www.sdg4biz.eu/en/ .