The Leeds Net Impact Business Case Competition Travesty

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I had the opportunity to attend this year’s Leeds Net Impact Business Case Competition in Boulder, Colorado over the weekend, which claims to be “The premier case format competition built around businesses facing sustainability challenges, while succeeding financially.” If that really is the case, then the bar for sustainability has been set very, very low.

Let me give you some background. The competition focuses on a problem in business focused on sustainability. The sponsor this year, Ball Corporation, provided the case with the aim to reinvigorate stagnant recycling rates in the US. 63 teams entered in the first round, 20 of which were selected to move on to the semi-finals. Two of those teams were from my school (BGI).

I would like to preface my next comments with this: I think the students and volunteers running this competition did an exceptional job.  This competition takes months of preparation and many, many hours of hard work.  I saw no hiccups in the execution of the competition, and with 20 teams and dozens of judges this is an impressive task.  Good work guys, you should be proud.

I was in Boulder cheering on my teams, one of which was chosen to be one of the five teams in the finals. I was able to sit in on four of the five final presentations, beginning with my school’s team. Their case was fantastic: set up recycling kiosks in high schools, where a portion of the deposit will go to the school lunch program. The students will essentially help pay for meals for the students sitting next to them in class. Talk about a social motivator! The kiosks will pay for themselves easily and feed into the recycling program in order to buy more kiosks for other schools, creating a self-sufficient program which would eventually recycle billions of cans and save millions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, all the while helping feed healthful meals to millions of students. The practiced delivery was flawless, all questions were handled with confidence and ease, and the team was relaxed and professional.

Then the other teams presented. UW, who eventually got first place, pitched an iPhone app called “Loop” which would tell you where the nearest recycling can is, as well as the ability to track your recycling rates. (Guess what? Already exists. And it isn’t going to change the habits of anyone who doesn’t already care about recycling or owns an iPhone.) They were the only other team to remotely mention environmental savings, which the BGI team blew clear out of the water.

USC, who got second place, pitched a Facebook game about recycling that needed 15 million users to break even. Their pitch was stumbled and canned, and they didn’t seem to realize that it already exists as well. Again, not going to change anyone’s habits who doesn’t already care about recycling and is limited to Facebook users. (And they wanted to partner with Zynga and Waste Management, both of whom are currently running direct competition to this game. Not to mention Zygna is one of the most despicable gaming companies around and would steal their idea in a heartbeat if given the chance.) The team didn’t even mention environmental savings.

All told, BGI’s was the only team that mentioned the triple bottom line with a social motivator to get kids to care about recycling. You think that would matter in a Sustainability Competition.

So what happened? After the winners were announced, some students spoke to some of the final judges and discovered that another judge from a major corporation had already tried a kiosk campaign once and rejected any teams who used them, not letting them place in the top three. Major arguments for BGI to place went unheard and the strongest and most stubborn personalities refused to look at the presentation on its own merits. BGI was not to get any higher than 4th place.

Nice try, Judges.

This experience has taught me three major lessons:

#1 The Sustainability movement has a long, hard, uphill battle to fight against the status quo. Watching a fantastic idea get ignored for flashier ideas that won’t work has shown me how stubborn old industry hands can be.

#2 Leeds really must change the judging methods for the competition to weigh sustainability higher.  I can tell you right now that students from my school know more about sustainability than 90% of the judges in the competition (and in this year’s case, definitely more about social media as well). The competition is currently judged by the sponsors, and from reports from the judging room it sounds like opinion and personality take precedence over a non-partisan rubric. The Walmart Better Living Business Challenge does this really well, weighing sustainability higher than profitability in a well-defined rubric.  If the Leeds competition claims to be about sustainability, then back up your claim and make it less of a farce where giant companies can wash themselves in green. This is a fantastic competition that is in danger of losing credibility for giving too much power to the sponsors. Which leads me to my third lesson…

#3 The Net Impact brand is in danger of diluting into another greenwashing tool. This competition showcases a school’s ability to use  the “Net Impact” title to highlight its progressive efforts towards sustainability without really flexing its muscles to prove it.

Time to buck up, Leeds. You can do better than this next year.

The opinions in the article are solely those of the author (who is extremely pissed off) and not of BGI or other students in the competition.