From research to results: How Impact Labs connects with business
Climate change is the defining crisis of our time, and businesses have a critical role to play in addressing it. But navigating the ever-changing regulatory landscape and translating complex research into actionable strategies is often challenging.
And climate change is just one facet of the emerging economic, environmental and social global challenges businesses are increasingly required to respond to and manage, with other significant facets including modern slavery and AI.
Monash Business School’s pioneering Impact Labs, whose partners include government agencies, local industry and business, not for profit and multi-national organisations, has been created to help industry meet these new challenges, Deputy Dean Research, Professor Russell Smyth, says.
The Impact Labs
Launched in 2023, the network of six research hubs bridges the gap between academic expertise and industry needs using a secret weapon: interdisciplinary collaboration.
“The grand challenges outlined in Monash University’s strategic plan, Impact 2030 are climate change, geopolitical security and thriving communities. They are all massive challenges that require multidisciplinary solutions,” Prof Smyth says.
“Impact Labs are designed to be outward-facing, enabling us to engage with industry and government on these critical issues while also fostering internal collaboration across different faculties.”
A multi-dimensional collaboration with Citipower
As part of Monash Business School’s long-term partnership with leading Australian energy distributor Citipower, whose leaders are working with our Corporate Education team to enhance the organisation’s digital and energy transition, sustainability capability and general leadership development, leaders from our Green Lab, Energy Lab and SoDa Labs stepped in to contribute their expertise.
“Our teams bring together academics from across multiple disciplines - economics, accounting, law, management – all with expertise relevant to Australian businesses,” Green Lab Director Dr Anita Foerster says.
“This allows us to offer insights on everything from corporate sustainability regulation and reporting to investor perspectives and engagement priorities and the uptake of circular economy principles in industry settings.”
Dr Foerster says Impact Labs worked closely with Citipower to identify and articulate emerging sustainability risks and opportunities.
Researchers then presented on a wide range of topics, including the evolving regulatory context for net zero, shifting investor expectations regarding social sustainability, mandatory climate risk reporting standards, and practical strategies for adopting circular economy principles.
“We were able to contribute our knowledge of the fast-evolving regulatory context and industry best practices to help Citipower develop problem statements that captured timely and relevant issues for the company,” Dr Foerster says.
This culminated in roundtable discussions to enable Citipower leaders and staff to develop responses to the problem statements.
“For Green Lab, the collaboration provided an opportunity to connect with leaders in a prominent Australian business and really understand the practical challenges companies face in improving their sustainability performance,” she said.
Impact Labs’ core mission: Collaboration between academia and industry for broad benefits
Professor Smyth says the Citipower partnership exemplifies the core mission of Impact Labs: to foster collaboration between academia and industry for positive societal impact.
“The whole idea underpinning the Impact Labs is that we listen to industry and government about the problems they want to address,” he says. “For businesses, the Impact Labs offer access to cutting-edge research and solutions that are tailored to their specific sustainability challenges.”
Other benefits to organisations include tailored expertise and amplified impact through our world-class researchers and diverse resources, innovative tools and commercialisation opportunities and sustainable development that extends well beyond immediate business benefits, Prof Smyth says.
“And for the business school, the labs are a vehicle that enables us to have greater impact, to diversify our research funding from government and industry, and to create unique value propositions for our corporate education offerings.”
Flexibility in collaboration
With tailored solutions at its core, Impact Labs is able to work with businesses in multiple ways.
They include co-designed research projects, programs of seminars and workshops, PhD students interning with organisations, corporate education programs, and the development of new digital tools or indexes.
Learn more about how Impact Labs partners with business.