Using 3rd Party Perspectives to Establish Sustainable Development Goals

The Challenge

NineSigma’s client needed to broaden their thinking around how technologies will evolve, and what these changes might look like in 10 years. With their vision set on 2030, the CTO needed to better identify Sustainable Development Goals and recognized the inherent bias in setting these goals without outside input. With the aim of gaining objectivity in their thinking and preventing them from overlooking useful business ideas, NineSigma collected and narrowed down business ideas to inform the Client’s SDGs from the fresh perspective of a third party.

Results

The client selected specific areas of interest for its SDGs, and NineSigma activated its Open Innovation Council (OIC) network of management-level experts to apply their knowledge and perspective to these areas. The 3rd Party responses allowed the Client a better understanding of the targeted areas of interest, and helped in their decision-making process.

The OIC surveyed managers of major companies as well as startups, expecting business-like comments from managers of major companies and sharp ideas from startups.　In addition, the survey included questions to understand the Client’s understanding of the business, as well as questions about ideas for collaboration so that the client company would consider the survey as their own.

NineSigma evaluated the collected ideas for affinity with the client’s business and proposed promising ideas.

Client Voices

“Through this program, we were able to find ideas for business opportunities that we were not aware of, where our strengths could be utilized”