The Build for Purpose Canvas

The paper proposes the “Build for Purpose Canvas” (B4PC) to help organisations to put purpose at the heart of their business, build meaningful relationships with communities and amplify impact by co-creating solutions to common issue(s) of concern when multiple stakeholders share value(s). The B4PC complements the “Build for Purpose Pathway” (See Fonseca et al., in press) that combines the benefits of different systemic approaches to sustainability as reviewed by Weaver et al., (2020). The B4PC can help participants to make sense of sustainability challenges, their complexity and interconnectedness; connect business purpose and value(s) with societal goals; appreciate interdependences within and between oneself, others, and ecological ecosystems; and identify ways to amplify impact by building meaningful engagement with communities in cross-sector partnerships. The paper offers a novel contribution by offering methodological considerations to the underlying systems concept to realise the potential of systems thinking and systems-based approaches to address our grand challenges for a sustainable future (e.g. a just transition to a low carbon economy, accelerating progress to attain the Sustainable Development Goals).