Guidance towards the Goals

Sammanfattning: The private sector is expected to take ownership and contribute towards achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and considering the innovative nature of start-up companies, they can be seen as key players. Though, they lack the guidance needed to assess the performance within the SDGs. Moreover, the literature within the field of sustainability assessment tend to focus on larger firms. This thesis aims to increase the knowledge about specific characteristics for start-ups and how they affect the assessment processes in the context of SDGs. This is done through an extensive literature review and exploratory interviews. The study implies that time and knowledge might be more limited in the context of start-ups, however it also exemplifies the benefits of being more flexible than established larger firms. The literature review and interviews laid the foundation for ten key factors that are highly important when conducting a SDG assessment, from an operational perspective as well as factors needed for an adequate assessment. Thereafter, four different SDG assessment tools are evaluated against these ten factors. The result presents the tools strengths and weaknesses as well as their application within the assessment process. It can be seen that the tools serve different purposes and that the choice of tool depends on the specific challenges faced by the start-up. None of the tools cover the importance of considering interactions between the goals. Moreover, it is not clear what indicators should be used in a sufficient sustainability assessment. This is further discussed together with suggestions regarding how the start-ups should approach these shortcomings, supported by existing research.