Raising start-up founders awareness about the importance of sustainability issues in business

Brikena Leka, Full Professor, and Arjan Tushaj, Associate Professor, presented views during their Zagreb study visit on Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Sustainable Entrepreneurs focusing to raise the awareness related to the significance of sustainable development, particularly the sustainability business activities. The core goal of their presentation concentrated on the raising start-up founders’ awareness about the worth of sustainability issues in business referring to Albania case. They emphasized the diverse considerations that sustainability and entrepreneurship should be the comprehensive integration of social, environmental, and economic value creation from the perspective of recent academic literature, particularly in developing countries, like Balkan countries. Also, they highlighted that the implementation of achieving sustainability objectives and rewards provides robust strengthening of a firm’s sustainability values, objectives, and strategy, particularly towards Albanian business competitiveness into the European Union’s standards.

However, they concluded that embedding sustainability into the core of start-up operations is essential for the long-term success of businesses and the well-being of society. In Albania, they determined during presentation that the journey towards sustainable entrepreneurship is underway, concerted efforts from educational institutions, policymakers, financial institutions, and the start-up community are required to accelerate progress. Otherwise, they confirmed the gap between startup founders’ views – “what they say” – regarding sustainable business practices and their business models – “what they do”. Due to this reason, they suggested more efforts to educate, encourage, and train startup founders to increase their awareness and willingness to incorporate sustainability as a core part of their business models.