Sustainability Training at Sea

By Marcus Müller & Antonia Hager

Supervisor: Dr. Gesa Lüdecke

Our final project was an elaborated business plan for a company offering business-related sustainability training for medium-sized companies on board sailing boats.

The concept of founding a business that offers such “off-shore” training or workshops originated in our drive to combine our passion for water sports and sailing with an education program about sustainability. When we started discussing how this could be realized, it became clear that writing an initial business plan would both help us to structure our approach and serve perfectly as a final project for the ESCP.

We hope that our business plan serves as both a starting framework for our enterprise as well as a preliminary "advertisement" within the ESCP and RCC networks, introducing our idea and inspiring potential partners and other interested parties. Our goal is to embed scientific and environmental knowledge gained from our physics and environmental studies backgrounds into a program that offers a motivating and stimulating environment for economic players.

During our research, rich discussions allowed us to frame our project more precisely; starting with the bare idea of "something with sailing and sustainability," we were able to hone in on more realistic concepts.

The major challenge was to clearly define the goal of the program. For this, we consulted with business owners about their experiences and requirements. Once the final concept had crystalized, we needed to learn what should be covered in a comprehensive and successful business plan, and how to go about writing one. We read about market analysis, finances, and company structures. Along the way, we continued to connect the economic and scientific elements of the venture to ensure sustainability thoroughly underpinned the business design.

The business plan had to be an economically promising concept, which is why we aimed to position our "naïve" vision in a market-driven framework. We also had to redefine our goals to fit realistically within the short scope of our project: while we started with the idea of directly developing course contents, we ended up working on defining the basic structure.
Having written the business plan as our final project at the RCC, we will now continue working on the next steps towards the long-term goal of realizing the project.