Effective Mission Integration: A Triple Bottom Line Canvas for Impact Business Model Innovation

While there is a growing consensus that firms should consider their social and environmental impact in addition to their financial performance, many find it difficult to integrate social and environmental impact missions with their profit mission. The mission integration challenge is particularly acute when the beneficiaries of the impact missions are not the same as the firm’s customers and when additional activities and resources are required for the intended impact to materialize. Yet, there are few business model design tools specifically designed to facilitate mission integration in impact business models. In this chapter we introduce a new tool developed for to support impact business model integration, the ‘Triple Bottom Line Canvas’ (TBLC). By supporting mission integration, the TBLC should help converting impact missions from profit drags (impact mission comes at a cost to profit) to profit drivers (impact mission drives profit).