Digital Climate Start-ups and the Natural Environment: Unpacking and Strengthening their Environmental Value

This chapter investigates how Digital Climate Start-ups (DCS) create value in response to Climate Change (CC), focusing on the role of the natural environment as a core stakeholder. Positioned at the intersection of digitalisation and sustainability. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with founders and CEOs of 27 European start-ups, we extend the Stakeholder Value Creation framework and develop a taxonomy of DCS by climate objective and strategic role. The findings show that DCS deliver customer value while generating environmental value by: (1) Recognising the natural environment as a direct stakeholder and beneficiary, (2) Joint purpose, (3) Unintended consequences, (4) Best available knowledge, (5) Climate hypothesis, and (6) Information transparency. A Climate Value Mapping Tool (CVMT) is proposed to support entrepreneurs, investors, and policymakers in assessing and improving Business Models for Sustainability (BMfS).