CASE STUDY
Collaboration Partners
Industry: Civil Society Initiative / Food Systems Education (non-profit, cross-sector coalition)
Project: “Sowing Impulses, Harvesting Change” (“Impulse säen, Veränderung ernten) – Developing a Business Impact Program”
Collaboration Partners: WeltTellerFeld (a joint initiative by Vienna Food Policy Council / Ernährungsrat Wien, Brot für die Welt Österreich, Kleine Stadt Farm, Hallo Klima), under the aws Sustainable Food Systems Initiative (Austrian Wirtschaftsservice)
Contact person: Theresa Ortbauer, Projektkoordinatorin WeltTellerFeld
Challenges
Modern corporations face mounting pressure to embed sustainability into their operations, yet corporate sustainability training often remains abstract, confined to indoor seminar rooms, compliance checklists, and PowerPoint presentations. Decision-makers frequently struggle to connect high-level ESG metrics to the physical realities of global supply chains and ecological boundaries. Operating in the complex, resource-intensive food sector demands more than surface-level “greenwashing” – it demands a fundamental shift in mindset.
The gap: businesses needed an immersive translation bridge to connect commercial strategy directly with ecological ground-truths.
Our Approach & Execution
Experiential Field Immersion:
Rather than traditional consulting workshops, corporate teams were brought directly onto WeltTellerFeld’s 3,000-square-meter open-air educational space in Vienna’s Lobau – an area mirroring the exact agricultural surface required to sustain one person for a year.
Cross-Sector Co-Design:
Konsultori teamed up with WeltTellerFeld under the aws Sustainable Food Systems initiative to design a pioneering format: the “Impulse säen, Veränderung ernten: Business Impact Program.”
Commercial-Ecological Translation:
Leveraging Konsultori’s expertise in food ecosystem design and business strategy, the program immersed corporate decision-makers into the tangible realities of land use, resource allocation, and supply chain dependencies.
Results & Impact
The collaboration delivered a replicable, high-impact framework that transforms corporate participants from passive observers into active strategists.
By grounding abstract sustainability data in physical, soil-level experiences, companies gained the clarity needed to rethink product portfolios and supply chain dependencies, and align commercial goals with planetary boundaries – while having a fun, immersive experience and practicing hands-on collaboration.
Key Highlights
In the conceptual and design stage of the project we hosted 2 corporate test clients (1 mixed management team, 1 sustainability team) and incorporated their feedback into the program design.
Key Learnings
Experience over cognition
Traditional training relies on cognitive data processing, which often fails to trigger behavioral change. Standing directly on a plot that maps a personal or corporate consumption footprint replaces abstract metrics with visceral understanding, breaking down cognitive bias and fostering the emotional commitment required for authentic corporate transformation.
Business and civil society need each other, not silos
Tackling systemic challenges like food sovereignty and climate resilience requires tearing down the silos separating corporate entities from civil society organizations (CSOs). Businesses bring scalability and financial power; CSOs bring ethical grounding, systemic foresight, and grassroots proximity – together they create trusted environments for co-creating sustainable alternatives.
Food literacy is a strategic asset, not a nutrition fact
Food literacy is a multidimensional framework spanning the environmental, social, economic, and political webs connecting farm to fork. Organizations that grasp land footprints, fair labor dynamics, and ecological constraints move past compliance toward structural innovation, future-proofing their business models.
About the collaboration
The WeltTellerFeld is a unique place in Vienna where global food issues come to life. For me personally, the most important realisation is that we can all make a difference through our diet and the conscious choices we make in our daily lives.
Christina Giovanazzi, A1 Telekom Austria AG
Collaborations between multiple, diverse actors are essential for the just and sustainable transformation of our food system. In this project we successfully practiced exactly that kind of collaboration, since creative solutions need diverse perspectives.
Michael Kubiena, Organisation Design & Strategy expert, Konsultori
-> Collaboration for a sustainable future via a hands-on exploration of our food system