Hanken student team’s sustainable innovation story wins an international award
SolFoil-Solar Heated Packaging has been awarded the 2021 Flourish Prize for Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2: Zero Hunger with 16 other prize honorees for each of the other 16 SDGs. This business innovation story has been selected from amongst 585 stories published on the AIM2Flourish platform in 2020 and is one of the 17 best stories exemplifying how business is a positive force for good and demonstrating progress towards the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The innovation stories have been created as part of the Master’s Course Strategy and Sustainability spearheaded by Martin Fougère and Eva Nilsson. The student team consisted of Tat Lam, Jean-Philip Cronstedt, Ajda Stenovec, Karolina Jensen and Senni Muiniekka.
“We chose SolFoil-Solar Heated Packaging as the product to write about since one member of our team, Senni, had previously met the founder of the company, Nina Borger, and heard her story. It's a package that uses solar energy to heat up food or water for example”, Karolina Jensen clarifies.
The package can be used when hiking or camping, but also for example in refugee camps.
“We don’t really think about how a warm meal is a given for us, and how big of an impact it has on our quality of life,” Jensen remarks.
The team interviewed Borgar for the assignment. According to Jensen, they faced two challenges when accomplishing it.
“One of them was that we had to do everything without the possibility of meeting each other in person. The second one was how to do justice to the product - and Nina - when writing about it as it’s such a personal thing”, Jensen reflects.
You can find more information on the all the awardees here.
‘’We are delighted to have finally received the Flourish Prize. It is even more rewarding that the inspirational, transformative Finnish innovation by SolFoil, which potentially tackles both environmental and social SDGs, receives the award in relation to one of the most crucial SDGs, namely SDG 2, Global Hunger. A big congratulations to the students for writing the case study, and above all warm congratulations to Nina Borger and SolFoil!", commented Martin Fougere, Associate Professor in Management and Politics and Eva Nilsson, Doctoral student at the Department of Management and Organisation.
AIM2Flourish is a program housed at the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at the Weatherhead School of Management - Case Western Reserve University. AIM2Flourish is a United Nations-supported global learning initiative where students use Appreciative Inquiry and the 17 Global Goals as a lens to discover and celebrate untold stories about business innovations for good.