Impact Radar: Project the Impact of Your Innovation

Today, it is unthinkable not to assess the environmental and societal impact of one’s solutions right from the project phase. Yet this assessment proves to be a difficult task for which we are ill-equipped.

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Given the significance of the issue, the Dynergie R&D lab felt compelled to address it. Thus, after several months of work, the Impact Radar was born.

The challenge of measuring the impact 

To avoid reinventing the wheel, it was important for us to build on existing work. And there was plenty of it: several organizations (funders, companies, research labs) have developed their own indicators for measuring the environmental and social impact of projects. However, in our view, existing tools and assessment frameworks have several limitations: 

• They are not always holistic, but rather focus on specific criteria aligned with the objectives of the evaluating organization. As a result, we may have tools that exclude social impact, for example, or that focus solely on greenhouse gas emissions.
• They include indicators related to the company’s organizational structure (such as the number of women in senior management), whose connection to the impact is not always clear
• They rarely think in terms of net changes; yet it is difficult for us to assess the impact of a solution without comparing it to an initial situation or an alternative solution. The CO2 emissions from a new solution can only be considered beneficial when compared to the CO2 emissions from current solutions.

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This state-of-the-art analysis not only confirmed the need for a new tool tailored to the specific characteristics of innovation projects, but also made us realize that there are a great many impact indicators.

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In addition, Dynergie supports a wide variety of projects. Similarly, a public funder such as BPI or the management of a large corporation is exposed to a wide variety of projects—and thus potential impacts. We therefore felt it was important to have a tool that could be applied to this diversity of projects, while maintaining the ease of use necessary for adoption by all innovation project leaders.

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So we had our specifications: 

• Differential reasoning based on an initial or alternative scenario
• A perspective that takes into account both environmental and social impacts
• Indicators that can be assessed using projective techniques
• Easy to use 

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Based on these specifications and the existing impact measurement tools and methodologies, the R&D lab developed the Impact Radar.

The Impact Radar: Overview and Metrics

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The Impact Radar is organized into three broad categories: 

• Environmental impact, which refers to the project’s effect on the planet. These impacts are primarily considered during the project’s design phase.
• Social impact, which refers to the difference the project makes in terms of social inequalities. These impacts are primarily considered during the design phase.
• Project governance, which outlines how the project lead will ensure that the anticipated impacts are achieved. These impacts depend primarily on the project’s implementation and rollout phases. 

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In these categories, the dashboard includes 8 metrics that align with our initial objectives and are based on existing metrics or tools. 

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We provide a brief overview of the indicators below.

Severity of the reported issue

This indicator assesses the significance of the issue addressed by the project and its alignment with current and future global challenges. For this indicator, we have based our assessment on alignment with the Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations.

Greenhouse gas emissions

This indicator is designed to measure the reduction in greenhouse gas emissions achieved by the project, compared to the baseline.

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The measurement is expressed in CO2 equivalents and is based on the methodology defined by ADEME.

Impact on biodiversity

Here, we measure the impact of the project on biodiversity conservation, based on the key components of biodiversity identified in the State of the Art report.

Circularity

The circularity rating indicates the product's circularity potential: 

• because it uses recycled or reused raw materials
• because it can be recycled or reused at the end of its life
• because it has a longer service life than the benchmark solution
• because it results in a larger functional unit than the baseline solution

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Please note that this indicator is suitable for product innovations, but not for service or business model innovations. 

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To measure circularity, we use the tool developed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.

Reducing social inequality

The State of the Art report shows that the vast majority of social impact indicators relate to the reduction of social inequality. We have identified four main areas: unequal access to housing, unequal access to healthcare, unequal access to employment, and unequal access to education.

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The indicator therefore assesses the extent to which the project reduces inequality in one or more of these four areas. 

Encouraging more sustainable user behavior

This indicator helps assess whether the project encourages users to adopt more sustainable behaviors in the long term, drawing in particular on nudge theory . 

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^{The nudge, literally “a nudge,” refers to techniques designed to change everyday behaviors through subtle incentives and by facilitating decisions that are initially counterintuitive. Examples include the Stockholm subway, which installed a giant piano on its staircases to encourage passengers to use them; or certain cities that encourage people to throw trash in the bins by turning them into “polling stations” (would you rather use the Rafael Nadal trash can or the Roger Federer trash can?).}

Deployment Strategy

This indicator ensures that impacts are taken into account during the project's implementation. 

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The question, then, is whether the company has established KPIs related to its impact as part of its project implementation strategy, and whether these KPIs will actually be used to maximize impact and drive continuous improvement. 

Transparency regarding impacts

This indicator applies to projects with a high TRL (8–9). It assesses whether the company communicates the impacts of its project in a transparent and credible manner (sourced). The purpose of this indicator is to mitigate the risks of greenwashing and empty promises. 

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The TRL, or Technological Readiness Level, is a measure of the technological maturity of the developed solution. The scale ranges from TRL 1 (the basic principles of the technology are understood) to TRL 9 (the system has been proven through successful operations in real-world conditions).

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Goals of the Impact Radar

The primary goal of Impact Radar is to help the companies we support assess the impacts of their innovative projects by considering all aspects of those impacts. Once these impacts have been evaluated, these organizations can then seek to maximize the impacts their projects have already created or generate new impacts they had not previously considered. 

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We also aim to share the Impact Radar with the goal of improving it with the help of stakeholders working in this field (funders, research organizations, other companies), and to create a standard, actionable tool for measuring and promoting the impact of innovation projects. 

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‍For more information about Impact Radar, please feel free to contact Léa Bunnens, Director of R&D (lbunnens@dynergie.eu).