2012 Universiteit Wageningen/Dutch Provincie: Green Entrepreneurship

The aim of this project was to design and test a decision design that would enable entrepreneurs to assess the necessity and usefulness of ‘green business’. For this project, the Province of Utrecht was prepared to write to a number of entrepreneurs to participate in the research by making financial company data available and making strategic estimates to fill the decision-data base.

In the run-up to this project, an exchange of knowledge took place with Prof. Leemans about the decision-making methods and techniques to be used. This has resulted in, among other things, the outlines of a number of innovative techniques, which have also been incorporated into the algorithms in this book.

A deliberate choice was made for a small heterogeneous group, so from the profit sector, care etc. When a design or technique has to be tested, in which estimates are also processed, a result of significant correlation rules out coincidence (see among others from page 101). In this small heterogeneous group, the design correlation was significant. Three sub-designs were designed and tested (see next page):

– The Business Statistics Scan
– The Continuity Scan
– The Government Relationship Scan

After this design-validation project, another economic crisis broke out in 2012, the interest in ‘green business’ faded and it was only in 2017 that it was taken more seriously again (but in 2020 it is still too little!).

At Priority the costs of A,B and C are shown as a percentage of all costs of the participating organisations.

Realization shows the expected increase in costs (related to the expectation of all costs 6 years later).

In 2012 CBS had calculated the costs data for all companies in the Netherlands in 2012 and made also a forecast for ‘6 years later’.

The conclusions from both Matrices of the validation group are of course not equal to the trend for ‘the whole of the Netherlands’.

It only concerned the test group and, therefore, the question was of great importance which explanations they gave for the difference between their ‘matrix image’ and the CBS-image; and also the question was whether they would still consider their own image valid after the comparison.

The latter was indeed the case, and this was also supported by the two Scans on the following pages.

For ‘Continuity Objectives’ and ‘Government Relations Objectives’ (see next page), no CBS data existed; CBS does not keep track of such trends.

This Continuity Scan contained 10 Objectives (see next page). In the RP-Matrix®, the Objectives have been indicated which the participating organisations typed as ‘most urgent’; this means that the other Objectives scored highly. The lowest (G and H) Objectives scored lower than 60 (and therefore ‘insufficient’); G is in the MODERATE quadrant (the use of internal strategic key figures) and H in the BAD quadrant (the use of external green data, which therefore does not strictly relate to the own business).

The group explained that H mainly concerned the outside world, that, as with G, no real danger was yet foreseen, but that if the outside world for ‘green business’ were to become worse than foreseen at the time, and if it would become a threatening factor, this could have a very negative impact on the organisation.

In 2021, the realisation dawned worldwide that the shortage of raw materials, energy, etc. and the emergence of an increasing number of climate-related disasters would literally and figuratively cause great harm to mankind within a few years.

It also became clear in 2012 – using the test group as an example – that organisations would not be able to cope with disasters and/or successfully launch and realise innovations without support from the authorities. In short, the test group indicated that the government profiled all kinds of things and said it wanted to enable them, but that in their experience little came of it; the government did not respond or (according to the test group) was behind the times.

Therefore, while in 2012 it was still an ‘unpleasant’ situation, by 2021 it had become clear that governments in the Netherlands, Europe and beyond (so not only in countries such as Brazil) had not only failed to act, but in a sad number of cases had actively cooperated with companies that caused serious damage to the environment.

Without the use of decision-making tools, ‘green’ strategic innovations are doomed to failure, because the probability is very small that the right Strategic Goals will be set in time, and if they are set at all, organisations have a very small probability of being able to make effective adjustments in changing circumstances in order to still succeed.

Necessary or compulsory ‘green entrepreneurship’ is more topical than ever in 2022.