This study explored whether futures thinking and backcasting could help entrepreneurs consider sustainability. Through workshops, entrepreneurs envisioned their businesses in 2050 and worked backwards to identify steps to realize their visions. Most entrepreneurs focused on economic factors and had difficulty envisioning transformative futures. While backcasting provided a different perspective, entrepreneurs were not convinced of climate change's relevance to their businesses. Long-term follow up would be needed to assess impacts on entrepreneurial mindsets and sustainability.

1. Executive Summary
What if futures thinking canenable entrepreneurstobe more sustainable?
William T K Ng
MSc Thesis 2014-15
Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London
Supervisor: Mike Tennant
Objectives
The aim of this study was to explore and investigate whether futures thinking could help
entrepreneurs be more sustainable. By conducting live participatory workshops that utilised
backcasting – a normative technique – entrepreneurs were given the opportunity to:
 Immerse in and think about the long term future by identifying visions in 2050
 Consider climate change as a wider issue and understand its impact on their
businesses, and vice versa
 Critically reflect and evaluate the practical application of the technique
Introduction
As climate change is increasingly linked to human activities and its adverse impacts on
humans and nature continue to exacerbate, the need to tackle its causes is more important
than ever. As one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, businesses play a
vital role, yet many of them still prioritise short-term financial gains over the environment and
society leading to unsustainable practices. Even with the desire to improve, large
corporations often lack the transformational mind-set that enables them to break out of the
business-as-usual scenarios1
and achieve all three pillars of sustainability: environmental,
social and economic. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are typically more innovative, ready
to take risks and seize opportunities. As the business leaders of the future, they can
potentially be more transformational and help shift not just their own businesses, but also
their industry and sector, to be more sustainable.
Futures thinking is a discipline that allows users to immerse in the, typically long term future,
and explicitly consider the implications, link to the present and apply interventions where
appropriate. It is therefore a potentially valuable tool to help entrepreneurs to come up with
transformational and sustainable long term visions.
Methodology
The backcasting technique used was adapted from ActKnowledge's Theory of Change2
.
Chosen for its simplicity and straightforwardness, its efficacy was evaluated by a live
application with entrepreneurs in a series of participatory workshops. Prior to attending,
entrepreneurs completed a short survey, which formed the baseline of their existing mind-set
and perceptions. During the two-hour sessions, they were introduced to futures thinking and
climate change, and engaged in a macro-trend brainstorming exercise as a prelude to the

2. backcasting exercise. Participants then identified a 2050 goal, and worked backwards to find
the layer of enablers immediately necessary for achieving the goal. Further layers of
enablers were identified based on the most important factor at each layer, until a pathway to
the present day was developed. In total 14 entrepreneurs participated across seven
workshops; the numbers in each session ranged from one to four people.
Analysis and discussion
The range of qualitative outputs provided for three streams of analyses:
1. The pre-workshop survey (comprising perceived business success factors), macro-
trends and backcasting (comprising 2050 visions and vision enablers) data were
aggregated at the workshop level and analysed using STEEP factors 3
and internal
competencies to assess participants' cognitive processes and how they changed
during the workshop.
2. Their 2050 visions were then analysed for their transformational potential using the
Three Horizons framework4
.
3. The efficacy of the workshops was assessed by a thematic review of the audio
transcriptions and participants' direct feedback at the end of the workshops.
The cognitive frame analysis revealed that in general, most participants' present-day mind-
sets were business and economically focussed, as they considered economic factors and
internal competencies as key to their success. During the workshop process there was some
evidence of their cognitive frames expanding as socio-cultural and environmental
considerations were explicitly brought forth during the macro-trends exercise. This continued
as environmental considerations became most prominent during their 2050 visioning. As
they considered the practicalities of how to realise their visions, they defaulted back to their
business and financial cognitive frames. Although not applicable to all entrepreneurs to the
same extent, the 'double-cone' model is an illustration of their cognitive processes during the
workshop (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 – Double-cone model depicting participants' cognitive process during the workshop
Despite this, the message was less encouraging when the 2050 visions were analysed
against the Three Horizons model for their transformational potential. Of the 14 participants,
only four (from two workshops) demonstrated evidence of future visions that were on the
transformational H3 horizon, i.e. able to disrupt and displace the incumbent H1 system. Two
others also showed signs of being able to transform the status-quo, though to a lesser

3. extent. The remaining eight participants' visions were either incremental at best, or some
could not identify long term goals at all. This is depicted in Figure 2.
Figure 2 - Matrix showing participants' 2050 vision categorised by the Three Horizons framework,
compared with how environmental their start-up currently is
Of all the visions that included the environment, only one came from an entrepreneur whose
start-up was unrelated to sustainability – most of the green visions were in the upper half of
the diagram (i.e. their start-ups were already related to the environment). This suggests that
the level of cognitive broadening in relation to climate change and sustainability was limited
for most of the other participants.
The thematic review of audio transcriptions and participants' direct feedback on the
workshops revealed that most of them found backcasting a useful technique that allowed
them to think differently. Their level of engagement during the exercise was also generally
encouraging, although it was recognised that the impact on their views of climate change
and sustainability was limited to being educational for the lesser-informed. Generally it was
felt that climate change was still too far removed from their businesses.
Conclusion and implications
Overall, this research has shown that backcasting is a valuable tool that offers a different
perspective and way of thinking to entrepreneurs beyond their micro, day-to-day cognitive
frames. The workshops offered the opportunity to expand beyond their focus of economic
and internal success factors, and think about the long term future in a structured way

4. (though a minority of entrepreneurs found the methodology too simplistic for their business
models). One of the biggest challenges of this study was the entrepreneurs’ abilities to come
up with transformational long term visions, which were very limited. Without a fantastical,
radical or transformational vision, the normative nature of backcasting was, and will continue
to be, somewhat undermined and its full potential untapped. Going forward, it is important to
spend more time on the workshop design and process in order to give participants as much
help and opportunity as possible to think transformatively.
It should nevertheless be acknowledged that the workshops were merely 2-3 hours in length,
and their impact on the entrepreneurs’ views of the future and sustainability, and ultimately
how they run their businesses, may not be apparent until they have had a chance to reflect
in their own time. Thus a suggested follow-up would be to study the participants over a
longer period of time.
Finally, although climate change and sustainability were seen as important topics, most
entrepreneurs were not convinced of their immediate relevance to their businesses. Going
forward, it is suggested that more time be devoted to exploring in depth how climate change
and sustainability can directly or indirectly impact their start-ups, and vice versa. The
workshops could be deemed successful if the entrepreneurs, our future business leaders,
became more sustainable even in the slightest way.
1
Gore, S. (2014) How do companies think aboutthe future? MSc. Imperial College London.
2
Centre for Theory of Change.(2013) How does theory of change work? [Online]Available from:
http://www.theoryofchange.org/what-is-theory-of-change/how-does-theory-of-change-work/
3
STEEP stands for social (or socio-cultural),technological,environmental,economic and political/legal.This
framework is widelyused in business strategyand is also known as PESTEL when political and legal are
considered separately.
4
Curry, A. & Hodgson,A. (2008) Seeing in multiple horizons:connecting futures to strategy. Journal of Futures
Studies. 13 (1), 1-20.