Report // Nexus2020: The most important research questions for business sustainability

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CISL website (full report)

Summary

The most efficient way for academics to identify the research needs of companies is to talk with them; likewise the most effective way for companies to obtain useful insights from academics is to work with them as partners from the beginning of a research process to its conclusion – and potentially beyond into practice where new questions arise. This is surprisingly rare. A more conventional approach is for academics to engage companies at the end of a research process (or not to engage them at all!) in what is usually referred to as dissemination. The absence of users during the design phase of a research study can inhibit its ability to make sense to – or even be seen by – users after publication. For this reason the Nexus 2020 project set out to build a bridge between the business and academic worlds to identify the top 40 questions that, if answered, would best help companies to manage their food-energy-water-environment nexus dependencies and impacts. This was the first time that these two communities have been brought together effectively to co-produce research priorities that underpin solutions to nexus challenges such as managing competing uses of land, building resilient supply chains and sustaining livelihoods in resource-scarce parts of the world. The report

• outlines nexus research priorities
• explains why partnerships between businesses and researchers are critical in the long term for companies to thrive
• calls for researchers and business practitioners to develop specific projects to answer pressing nexus issues
• outlines the opportunities of this co-production approach for research funding agencies

Content

• Foreword
• Introduction
• Why should business consider the nexus?
• Business and academics co-create research questions
• Top 40 questions for Nexus2020
• Five emergent themes
• Categorising the top nexus questions for business
• Incentives for change
• Collaboration and stakeholder engagement
• Investing in sustainability
• Supply chains taking a landscape approach
• Making better policy
• Creating opportunities
• Next steps
• Participants

Published

2016

By

• Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership
• Nexus Network (UK)