Dear all,
NBS is piloting a new program to catalyze high-impact collaborations between business sustainability research centres around the world.
The Network for Business Sustainability, in coordination with the Sustainability Centres Community and with generous support from the Ivey Business School at Western University, is offering a new program to help global research centres sharpen their impact strategy, build strategic partnerships, and find funding.
Since 2012, the Sustainability Centres Community has convened centre leaders, enabling them to build relationships, share best practices, and support one another on shared goals. Now, we are piloting a new program to take centre support deeper: Centre Collaboration Incubators.
Centre Collaboration Incubators are a facilitated process to help a pre-selected group of research centres, working on the same topic but having complementary resources and capabilities, to scope a collaborative project and apply for joint funding.
Incubator participants will:
➡️ Build strong, trust-based relationships across geographically diverse centres (Global North and South) with complementary expertise, perspectives, and networks.
➡️ Co-create a high-quality, collaborative research project that aligns with members' impact and career goals.
➡️ Identify a portfolio of relevant and achievable project funding sources, including applying for a joint grant.
➡️ Learn new skills and insights related to co-creating research with practitioners, and recoupling knowledge creation with positive systems change.
➡️ Gain visibility with a global network of sustainability scholars and practitioners.
➡️ (Optional) Produce public outputs of interest to Incubator members, which could include case studies, practitioner articles, or theory papers.
The research projects that emerge from Incubators will embody four values:
➡️ True co-leadership between Global South and Global North centres.
➡️ A systems thinking, interventionist approach, which tackles the root cause of a societal issue to create change at scale.
➡️ Co-creation with practitioners, to ensure research results in real-world change.
➡️ Co-creation with a large, global community of research centres.
The first Incubator will begin in December 2025. Expression of Interest deadline is Friday, November 14, 2025.
Learn more and submit an Expression of Interest:
Feel free to share this information within your network, and express your interest!