Positive Impact Collaboration

Fostering collaborative action for positive societal impact

Summary

There is a broad range of activities related to sustainability and creating a positive impact for people and planet going on in the HSG ecosystem. This project aims to break down silos and facilitate interaction and co-creation across different groups such as students, researchers, and members of university management and administration.

Theory of Change

Challenge
With its vibrant decentralized ecosystem, people at HSG working towards positive impact are often not aware of each other and each others activities, thereby limiting the transformative impact and/or scope of those activities.
Activities
Facilitate exchanges four times a year to create visibility, connections, and support each other
Offer a running chat of community members to share updates or ask for support
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Outputs & Outcomes
A sense of community across stakehoder groups and hierarchies
A solid basis for impact-focused collaboration among diverse stakeholders
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Impacts
Individual and collective inspiration and empowerment for creating positive impact
More effective collaboration in creating positive impact

Status & Current Focus

This project kicked off on 2023-11-15 and we are currently in a Running phase.

After successfully running for two years, we are currently looking into a more distributed leadership and facilitation of this project for 2026. We are also always trying to broaden the scope of people being aware/invited and joining this initiative.

Key Activities

PIC meetings usually follow the same simple yet effective and interactive structure to foster inspiration and collaboration:

  1. We start with a check-in welcome everyone and truly arrive
  2. People share about the most important impact-oriented projects they are working on. We write on Post-its and put them on the walls / windows, then walk around, read them, and start conversations.
  3. We have a short spotlight of 5-10 minutes on a topic that currently seems important at HSG
  4. In a project workshop, people propose challenges or exciting ideas they would like to discuss in the group and we break out into 3-4 groups to support and learn from each other
  5. We harvest the most important insights from the groups and make space for announcements about upcoming events or projects.
  6. We check out together

Emerging Outputs, Outcomes & Impacts

Output
PIC Meeting (2025-02-26): First meeting of 2025.
Output
PIC Meeting (2025-05-20): Second meeting of 2025.
Output
PIC Meeting (2025-09-23): Third meeting of 2025, spotlight on the re-launch of NexGen Impact.
Output
PIC Meeting (2025-11-18): Fourth meeting of 2025, spotlight on reflecting and aligning with the updated Strategic Plan of HSG.

Partners & Collaborators

University of St.Gallen (HSG)
This internal collaboration project aims to involve all stakeholder groups within HSG.

Get Involved

Does the Positive Impact Collaboration sound interesting to you? Do you have existing activities or ambitions that could be linked to this project? We are looking for partners and collaborators. Please get in touch!

Additional Information

The Positive Impact Collaboration was initiated by PhD students from the Institute for Economy and the Environment (IWÖ-HSG) and the Competence Center for Social Innovation (CSI-HSG) and co-created with a number of different HSG stakeholder groups. Since 2025 it is a formal collaboration with the Transformation Lab.