The Competitive Business for Saving the Planet : The Case of Digital Climate Start-ups and their Value Proposition

Digitalisation and climate change (CC) are two of the main trends and dominant processes of social change of our time, although the discourses about them have run in parallel to each other and research on their interconnectedness is still scarce with little published on this. Through an empirical investigation, this research offers an early perspective on the topic by looking at the business opportunities emerging from the current climate crisis and the value offering developed by Digital Climate Start-ups (DCS), as there is an extended expectation that digitalisation could make a significant contribution to tackling the global challenge of CC. This exploration of entrepreneurial firms is based on qualitative research, with the collection of primary and secondary data. It started with a mapping of over 200 European digital start-ups where addressing CC was at the heart of their value offering. Additionally, interviews were carried out with a sub-sample of 25 CEOs and Founders of these climate start-ups; these interviews provided an insight on how Digital Technologies (DT) are enabling new value propositions and what are the main characteristics of the emerging DCS. The research question that guided this study was: How do we unpack the value proposition of digital start-ups tackling climate change? The findings suggest three attributes that should be addressed by DCS in order to have a meaningful value proposition. These attributes constitute their climate credentials.