20 Years!

Introducing Our Team Members!

Barra Leading the Way for a Sustainable Future.

"....... a deeper understanding of our business."

You’ll be aware that SSC have a great team of skilled teaching professionals who have grown their knowledge from long careers working in industry. We have practical business experience and love to share that knowledge with others. Of course we’re very proud of what we do but it’s even better when you hear it directly from your own customers. Niina Karvinen is a project manager for the Erasmus+-funded Blueprint project called the European Social Innovation Campus, ESIC, at the Diaconia University of Applied Sciences in Finland, at their Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Social Innovations. After working with SSC on several occasions, Niina was happy to share her thoughts: “While working at Oulu University, I had the opportunity to provide Strategic Scientific Consulting courses to my PhD students and university researchers and participate myself. In the Presentation Skills and Productization of Your Own Expertise Training courses, the contents were carefully planned, identifying the needs of the individual participants and engaged students with tailored learning tasks in various ways during the courses. The participant feedback supports this finding and I was delighted with the outcomes. I still use what I learned in the classes in my everyday life, both in my work and as a PhD student! I highly recommend the customised training offered by Strategic Scientific Consulting for universities and business professionals. These training packages, together with highly talented coaches, can strengthen skills and help you make your voice and message heard”. Thanks Niina! For more information on SSC Skills for Business, Click on "Services: Courses" from this website menu

It’s now February, the darkest shortest days of the year are behind us and hopefully the weather will improve. All that periphery stuff really makes a difference to the wellbeing of a team, even if no-one suffers from SAD the extra effort of getting anywhere, or just keeping awake when all your sensory inputs are telling you to hibernate can take a toll. For businesses this is the time of the year when we often look at goals, set targets, adjust the budget plan and try to inject enthusiasm into the projects and workforce. Looking at the challenges for your company – how many of them that have been set are purely focussed on economic outcomes? How well is your company embracing and challenging itself on the environmental impact or social impact of what you are about? If you are thinking about any grant application in the coming year, you are more than likely to see sections on economic, social and environmental impact, on your plan for Net Zero and your approach to diversity. These areas are important, they are worth consideration rather than a rushed paragraph or two just before hitting submit. For us at SSC, Sustainable Development is a big thing. We truly believe that embracing a better world, with better products and a reduced inequality gap is the best route for businesses everywhere. Profit is important, but it is only part of the package. Having clarity on your status against Net Zero Scope 1, 2 and 3 is going to become increasingly important for the supply chain of all your customers. Why not get ahead on that as well? If any of these areas (Net Zero, Grant applications, Sustainable Development measurables) are important to you or you want to address them in your 2024 challenges then let us know and we can assist with a strategy session. Dr Cait Murray-Green

As business leaders, some of us are starting to get our heads around Net Zero and Scope 1, 2 and 3 requirements. Some of us will be making progress with Life Cycle Analysis; perhaps also traceability of our products and services. And others will be baffled by all the above.

Take the opportunity to give back when you can

How to be Truly Maximising your Sustainable Development Credentials When Business talks about Sustainability and being sustainable what do they mean? The economic aspects of creating a business model that will be successful for the future is pretty much understood by all, but what about the other aspects – the impacts on the environment and on people? Sustainability is really about bringing together the three aspects Economic, Social and Environmental, (often referred to as the three pillars) with equal importance and implementing them into how business interacts with the world and its resources. Sometimes businesses which are highly technical can find it difficult to relate their ambitions and practices into a world which needs them to be more considerate. They can feel disengaged as they are so embedded in the market needs of a capital led industry and surrounded in urban locations long since selected for rapid air-links and motorway links to suppliers and customers. However, the reality is that the need to embrace change across all business is of urgency no matter the market you are in or want to get into – and it is possible to achieve at a fundamental level without the need for greenwashing! At the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012, Member States adopted the outcome document "The Future We Want" in which they decided, to launch a process to develop a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to establish the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development. Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with its 17 SDGs was adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York in September 2015. With the post-Covid Build Back Better Sustainable Innovation Fund in the UK and the NGEU largest ever funding budget from the EU there are many opportunities for companies with Innovation ideas to be able to obtain some grant support. Sustainable Development isn’t just a buzzword, it is rapidly becoming a deeply embedded set of criteria that all innovation must embrace and align with in or fail to get public sector support. From the research that SSC has done it appears that companies fall into mainly two categories. The first is the group of companies that feel their business cannot fit into the criteria and that the goals really don’t apply to their ultra-technical market. They tend to make some effort around Gender Equality and skip rapidly over the list without any real engagement with the meaning of what is being asked across the other 16. The second are companies that are aligned with the BioEconomy, with getting a balance with the Three Pillars of society, environment and economics, and very naturally are doing what the UN has challenged them with. The first group tend to miss out positives about their businesses which could help them bring SD into their working practice without much effort, and therefore more easily score more thoroughly on the Sustainable Development section of any application forms. The second group tend to miss out positives about their businesses which they are failing to headline and include in their applications.  Here is our guide to what you can do to make your company more clearly and visibly aligned with the 17 Goals