One theme that emerged from my research was the identity of climate entrepreneurship within the broader entrepreneurship field.

I define a climate entrepreneur as someone pioneering change for the sake of the planet.

While business/commercial success is important to these people (it allows for impact to continue), it’s not everything. The people I work with want to make a bigger impact. They have a strong sense of social responsibility. They often move into climate entrepreneurship from something else; compelled to contribute to this crisis, and to do so with autonomy and innovation.

The place of climate entrepreneurship within the wider community wasn’t the main focus of my project. But when I started to explore it, themes quickly emerged.

Here’s what I learned:

(1) The 3 strengths of mainstream entrepreneurial support

Interviews who drew on content for mainstream entrepreneurs – e.g., podcasts and newsletters – or who attended non-climate incubators, coaching programmes and peer groups – said they did find them helpful to a point. These products offered support in three main areas:

• Fostering connection with peers

• Breaking down big goals into micro-actions

• Keeping momentum going

As one interviewee put it:

• “Sometimes I can have existential crises around the systemic things. I don’t really bring that side of me to the group calls. It’s often more about: okay, what kind of outreach are we doing? Or what systems do we have in place? It's quite business-led. So what I get from business coaching is a bit of a firm hand. I’m quite sensitive. So it’s great to get kicked up the butt a bit, and shown some kind of tough love sometimes.”

However, interviewees who were really plugged into mainstream support often felt like something was lacking.

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(2) The 3 gaps in mainstream entrepreneurial support

According to interviewees, climate entrepreneurs experienced gaps between how they themselves defined success, and how mainstream programmes/institutions defined it.

These gaps were in three areas:

• Content

• Values

• Paradigms

(a) Content

General business programmes were reportedly helpful. But they didn’t always feel comprehensive enough in terms of the types of change these climate entrepreneurs wanted to make.

Specifically:

They focused only on business models, and not on systems change.

• “My local university’s approach is all about money making, venture capital investment, blah, blah, blah, the product, whatever. And so what’s missing is something values based. The social entrepreneurship, which is the same stuff as the entrepreneurship, but with the heart. It’s a different model. It's circular economy. It’s about de-growth, to a point. And it is about respect for the planet.”

They highlighted revenue at the expense of different forms of impact.

• “I think the traditional idea of an entrepreneur is that often painted by the Silicon Valley ecosystem. But I don't think I’d get any gratification by getting an $X million valuation or raising crazy amount of capital if it's not linked to a real impact. So impact comes first. It’s obviously important to make it somehow financially viable, because that can ensure that the idea develops further and has a bigger impact, but I would put the two things in opposite order in terms of priority for myself.”

They didn't support entrepreneurs to embed ethical practices into the nuts and bolts of the business.

• “Business programmes need to talk about balancing purpose and money, and about responsible marketing. There are a lot of techniques to get people into sales funnels. And you want to stay authentic, but at the same time, you need to sell. And there are other things too: like, how do you actually start an eco-friendly website?”

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(2) Values

This was particularly the case when it came to hiring coaches and consultants. Climate entrepreneurs wanted to work with people who ‘got it’. People who understood the lens they looked through, their set of values, and their challenges. People who knew the climate entrepreneurship ecosystem. People who spoke the language.

• “One of the reasons I find it hard sometimes to ask for feedback or help is because a lot of [coaches] don't understand what we're doing, when we're working in sustainability. And so when I receive support, it’s with a very business-as-usual mindset. And because they don't understand the bigger purpose and mission, it's hard for them to relate. It can be useful to have some very business-driven feedback, but when they don't have the full picture, it doesn’t resonate with me.”

• “Coaching support in the past has been super helpful. But it would be useful if coaches had a specific understanding of what it’s like to be trying to do something in climate. We’re navigating such a complex space.”

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(3) Paradigms

Linked to the above, a number of interviewees felt frustrated at the current paradigm of entrepreneurship, which they saw as glorifying the individual entrepreneur and seeing them as lone geniuses (a la Steve Jobs).

• “I think that it's all a bit too hyped up. And the word ‘entrepreneur’ is a bit overused and problematic, in some senses. Entrepreneur worship is quite an Anglo-American thing. It’s like: you've got an idea, come up with the [Business Model Canvas], take it to market. I think entrepreneurship is much more than a very discrete product-to-market fit. I think entrepreneurship, in the biggest sense, is trying to make stuff happen and change — and to do so in the public and social sectors, probably even more so than in private sectors.”

They were passionate about thinking more broadly about innovation: moving from the standard ‘entrepreneur + idea’ to a much bigger approach that changed the status quo of the whole system.

• “I see a lot of individual impact entrepreneurs. And they do good work. And they have cool products, B2C or B2B. Doesn't matter. And they have the right mindset, I would say, but it's not systemic change. Systemic change is joining forces to accelerate a change in a model. It’s just like banks in the past joined forces to come up with a mobile payment solution. And then that led to Apple Pay, for instance. That’s what we call ecosystem innovation. And that’s what I find way more fascinating than any kind of individual initiative. Not to say they're not valuable. They're great. I follow them, I support them, I buy their products. But it's not going to solve the problem.”

I also heard frustration at being typecast as ‘climate types’ by mainstream business:

• “Prioritising the environment is more mainstream now. And it is easier to talk about these things. But before, if you mentioned the word environment, people thought you had horns and you were wearing sandals. And there's nothing wrong with wearing sandals. But you know, we're not all wearing sandals, and it’s perfectly valid. I don't think we should use the word ‘environment’; I think we should be using ‘resource management. Because that means you won’t mismanage resources.”

Let’s close by summarising what I learned overall, and looking at resources to take this further.