Read up on impact

During Impact Nation, we match eight medium-sized companies with a sustainability challenge to an innovative solution provider, and support them for 100 days in running a successful pilot together. From this experience, we’ve identified common challenges that SMEs seek to tackle within the areas of circularity, climate, and social sustainability, as well as fresh innovators working to target key issues in these fields.

The ‘Mapping Refugee & Migrant Entrepreneurship Ecosystems in Europe’ is a study conducted between January and June 2020 in collaboration with The Human Safety Net. The research addresses the information gap on how entrepreneurial support organisations should effectively develop service offering to both refugees and migrants to equip them with the skills needed to start and grow their business.

We proudly present our map of the Sustainable Food Ecosystem in the Netherlands. With the people and organisations of our sustainable food ecosystem, we’ve created 4 publications, 12 events, and 7 growth programmes, and accelerated 51 food startups since 2019!

The Investment Ready Program (IRP) is Impact Hub Amsterdam’s accelerator for growth-stage impact companies with scalable solutions to global problems. Each cohort of selected entrepreneurs engages in a systematic review of their business strategy, model, and team, before crafting a validated growth and investment plan. In 12 days of training sessions, peer- to-peer interaction, individual mentoring, and legal and financial coaching, the entrepreneurs grow their business from a startup into a mature company. The finale: a pitch on Demo Day for our network of purpose-driven impact investors and funds.

Throughout the food chain – from soil to mouth – people and organisations are working on ways to make the food system healthier and more sustainable. They try to produce with less and less impact on the environment and climate, generating less waste and with more attention to animal welfare. Impact enterprises place this kind of issues at the center of their business operations.

This paper offers insights into the Impact entrepreneurs field in Amsterdam and beyond. We share some emerging responses and recommendations for action to ensure the viability – and thriveability – of Amsterdam’s impact entrepreneurs and social innovators through the current Covid-19 situation and for the post-Covid-19 period of economic renewal.

Climate change. Loss of biodiversity. Famine and obesity. A national nitrogen crisis. Our current ways of food production and consumption are not sustainable. This report investigates two timely questions: how has Covid-19 impacted sustainable food entrepreneurs? And how should Impact Hb Amsterdam proceed to leverage its Food Ecosystem to accelerate the transition to a sustainable food system?

In this report, five cutting-edge pioneers of the short food supply chain discuss their drive and their mission. The founders of De Melkbrouwerij, Herenboeren, Boerschappen, Vokomokum & Atlantis Handelshuis use innovative, short-chain business models to build a fundamentally different system.

Our Impact Report is the perfect opportunity to understand how our network collaborates on solving societal issues in an entrepreneurial way. We are not only facilitating the emergence of a different world sometime in the future – we are living that world today, and challenging current socio-economic systems in the process. The challenge of doing the new in the context of traditional systems is not easy, but our community of impactmakers is learning every day about what works and what doesn’t, who is ready and who isn’t. We should celebrate these challenges more. They are evidence that we are testing the system and being tested by it.

The City of Amsterdam employs about 15,500 people, making it Amsterdam’s biggest employer. Impact Hub Amsterdam has a community of nearly 500 social innovators. How do we enhance the collaboration between the municipality and these entrepreneurs? The answer lies in building an effective, city-wide ecosystem for impact.