To accompany our latest Book Club pick, Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, chosen by Laura Brophy, we recommend watching Kate Raworth’s TED Talk, “A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhcrbcg8HBw 

At Colectivo, we’ve always believed that meaningful change doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens through people, through shared ideas, conversations, and small actions that build over time. That’s why we’ve launched the Colectivo Fellows Programme.

Over the past weeks, we’ve been bringing together a group of individuals from different backgrounds, geographies, and areas of interest, all connected by a shared curiosity around sustainability, behavioural science, and systems change.  This first cohort reflects that diversity.

Across Ireland and Europe, the availability of Green Transition funding -  while abundant - is often overlooked by companies. From national programmes such as SEAI and Enterprise Ireland to broader EU initiatives, organisations now have more opportunities than ever to support their sustainability ambitions. However, access to funding is only part of the equation. The real challenge lies in what happens next.

The Gap Between Funding and Impact

Many organisations approach funding as a standalone process. They identify an opportunity, submit an application, and, if successful, move into delivery. But in practice, this can sometimes  lead to a disconnect, where projects are shaped around funding criteria rather than strategic priorities, or worse,  implementation becomes fragmented.

WEF Global Risks Report 2026: Short-term Risk #7 | Long-term Risk #7 

Welcome to the fifth deep-dive in our 2026 series. Throughout the year, we are exploring critical global risks identified in the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2026, unpacking their scope, key insights, and potential implications for organisations navigating an increasingly complex world.

This time, we turn to a risk that sits at the intersection of economics, society, and trust: Inequality. Ranked as the #7 most severe global risk over both the two-year and ten-year outlook, it is also identified as the most interconnected risk in the report for the second consecutive year.

Restoring ecosystems, redesigning impact

At Colectivo, we believe sustainability must be measurable and actionable to be effective. Explain’d is our series focused on clarifying the concepts shaping how organisations operate in a changing world. Today, we explore Reforestation, one of the most visible and widely discussed climate solutions, yet often misunderstood in practice.

Innovation Spotlight is Colectivo’s series, authored by Lena Boudart, dedicated to surfacing credible signals from institutions, innovators, and systems already shaping the future of the global economy.  At Colectivo, we believe the next decade will not be decided by who talks the most about transformation, but by who learns fastest from working solutions already in motion. That is why we launched the Innovation Spotlight Series. Each edition focuses on concrete innovations that respond to systemic risk, translating them into strategic signals for leaders.

In this edition, we turn to one of the most consequential questions of the decade: Can the green transition actually work for people, not just for the planet?

What would it mean to design an economy that allows both people and planet to thrive?

This is the question at the heart of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth.

At a time when organisations are being asked to navigate climate risk, social inequality, shifting regulation, resource pressures and changing stakeholder expectations, this book offers a powerful invitation to pause and rethink some of the assumptions that shape decision-making.

For many of us, economics can feel technical, abstract or removed from everyday life. Yet Raworth brings it back to something much more human: how we organise society, how we define progress, and how we decide what kind of future we are building towards.

As sustainability expectations grow, the tools organisations use to understand their impact matter more than ever. Carbon accounting platforms are not only technical systems. They are part of how businesses build clarity, make decisions, and take ownership of their emissions journey.

This was the focus of a recent collaboration involving iMBA students from IE Business School, led by Laura McDermott, who is a faculty member of IE in addition to being founder and CEO of Colectivo. As part of their UX design work, students explored GreenTally’s carbon accounting platform and considered how the onboarding and wider user journey could be made even clearer, more intuitive, and more confidence-building for business users.

Sustainability is often framed as something organisations need to do.

For some, it is a priority. For others, it becomes a reporting requirement or a response to regulation. But increasingly, this framing is being challenged.

In a recent episode of the Materials Deep Dive podcast, hosted by Carolina Carreira, Colectivo’s CEO & Founder Laura McDermott explores a different perspective. Rather than viewing sustainability as an obligation, the conversation reframes it as an opportunity to build more resilient, adaptive, and future-proof organisations.

This month, I attended the National Manufacturing & Supply Chain Expo at the RDS Simmonscourt on behalf of Colectivo. The event brought together voices from across manufacturing, supply chains, digitalisation, automation and sustainability, with a strong focus on the practical realities facing Irish industry today. The event itself is positioned as one of Ireland’s key manufacturing and supply chain gatherings, bringing together industry leaders, innovators and experts to explore developments across the sector.

Reflections from the Urban Sustainability Forum at the Guinness Enterprise Centre

Urban sustainability is often framed as a long-term planning challenge. But increasingly, it’s becoming something much more immediate: a business performance issue.

At the recent Urban Sustainability Forum, hosted by the Guinness Enterprise Centre Sustainability Cluster in collaboration with Techies Go Green, this shift came into sharp focus. Using Dublin as a live case study, the session brought together business leaders, researchers, and innovators to explore a difficult but necessary question:

What happens when the health of a city starts to limit the performance of the businesses within it?

Welcome to the fourth deep-dive of our 2026 series. Throughout 2026, we explore a critical global risk identified in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2026; unpacking its scope, key insights, and potential takeaways for organisations navigating an increasingly complex world.

This time, we turn to a risk that sits just beneath extreme weather events in the long-term global outlook: Biodiversity Loss and Ecosystem Collapse. Ranked as the #2 most severe global risk over the next decade, it reflects a growing recognition that nature is not a backdrop to economic activity, but the foundation beneath it.

At Colectivo, we believe sustainability must be actionable to be effective. Explain’d is our series focused on clarifying the concepts that shape how organisations operate and evolve. Today, we explore one of the most critical and often misunderstood drivers of impact: Behaviour Change.

On 14th May, project professionals from across Ireland gathered at the PMI National Conference in the Aviva Stadium for a day focused on insight, learning, and connection.

The event brought together leaders and practitioners navigating increasingly complex project environments, where the demands of sustainability, innovation, and delivery must be balanced in real time.

Among the discussions, the panel on Capital Projects and Sustainability, featuring Colectivo’s CEO & Founder Laura McDermott, alongside industry experts like @Stephen D. (@EirGrid Group) @John Kelly CEng FIEI, Exec Coach (@ESB), and @Jay Sattin (@Mason Hayes & Curran LLP), offered a timely perspective on how infrastructure delivery is evolving.

As part of Colectivo’s Innovation Spotlight Series authored by Lena Boudart, we focus on climate solutions that are not speculative but ready, scalable, and system-shifting. This week’s spotlight builds on Project Drawdown’s evidence-based framework to explore one of the most powerful tools for cutting building emissions: electric heat pumps.

If lighting efficiency reduces demand, heat pumps transform the energy source itself.

At Colectivo, we believe that meaningful change happens through people: through shared ideas, conversations, and collaboration across disciplines, geographies, and perspectives.

That’s why we’ve launched the Colectivo Fellows Programme.

A growing community of individuals who are curious about sustainability, behavioural science, and systems change. 

This week, Colectivo joined the Sustainable Enterprise Webinar Series hosted by Enterprise Ireland to explore one of the most pressing challenges organisations face today:

How to communicate sustainability in a way that is credible, compliant, and meaningful.

The session brought together perspectives from policy, technology, and practice, with our founder Laura McDermott chatting with Sean Boyle, founder of UnitMode, and Carlota de Paula Coelho, Policy from B Lab Global. Together, the discussion unpacked what responsible communication looks like in an increasingly regulated and scrutinised landscape.

At Colectivo, we believe sustainability must be actively practiced to be truly FutureProof.

Earlier this month, I attended B Ag Caint – Let’s Talk B Corp! in Dublin on behalf of Colectivo, joining Ireland’s expanding community of businesses committed to positive impact.

Inspired by the Irish phrase “Bí ag Caint” (Let’s Get Talking), the event fostered honesty, openness, and practical insight, qualities often missing from sustainability discussions.

What stood out was not just the scale of ambition in the room, but the energy behind it. With Ireland now surpassing 100 certified B Corps, this is no longer a niche movement. It is a signal of where business is heading.

At Colectivo, we focus on turning insight into action. Measuring carbon is not the main challenge; the critical factor is what follows.

A Carbon Footprint Assessment typically begins with a key question: What exactly are we measuring? Defining the boundaries of the business, including operations, subsidiaries, and the value chain, is a critical first step. This ensures the results reflect the full scope of activities rather than a limited subset.

In a world defined by volatility, fragmentation, and rising expectations, progress is happening, though it is not always visible.

At Colectivo, we work closely with organisations navigating complex sustainability and transformation journeys. We consistently observe not overnight reinvention, but steady, intentional progress driven by targeted actions, collaboration, and long-term thinking.

In 2026, we are launching a new video series to bring these stories to light.

This series is focuses on capturing the compound effect: the accumulation of decisions, behaviours, and system changes that reshape organisations over time.