Business plan for a digital tool on healthy urban planning

Desired outcome

Are you passionate about leveraging innovative solutions to foster healthier, more sustainable urban environments?

We are currently seeking a dynamic and creative team to develop a business plan for the Healthy Cities Generator tool. This tool is designed to empower city planners, policymakers, and community stakeholders to create healthier cities by providing actionable recommendations and key insights into their health and economic impact.

Initial Problem Description

Urban planning plays a pivotal role in improving health, shaping the built environment to support and promote healthier lifestyles, foster well-being and reduce pollution and noise levels. However, despite the growing evidence to support this, the health perspective is often left out of the planning process.

Healthy Cities currently offers consultancy services on healthy urban planning and is aiming to commercialise the Healthy Cities Generator tool as a new product. The team developed the Healthy Cities Generator tool to offer cities a simple and evidence-based approach to integrating health considerations into urban planning decisions. After having tested a Beta version in 20 projects across 12 European countries, we will soon be launching the next iteration of the tool.

We would like to work with a team that can support us in building a business plan to boost the tool's commercialisation and guide the transition from a service-based to a product-based model.

Context

The current Healthy Cities Generator tool fills a gap in the market for a holistic yet accessible tool to integrate health and urban planning. It is based on a state-of-the-art analysis of 60+ health and planning tools, that identified a need for a digital, usable, holistic tool: existing options offered limited analysis or were too complex and data-demanding, so beyond the resources of many. Our pioneering accessible and evidence-based approach to healthy urban planning integrates 20 urban features and 30 health indicators, offering a unique combination of usability and a holistic scope.

Connection to cross-cutting areas

The challenge is connected to achieving general sustainability in urban settings. The Healthy Cities Generator's cross-sectoral approach supports cities in ensuring public interventions prioritise active mobility, proximity to services and green infrastructure, improving air pollution, noise, and biodiversity, and increasing social interaction in people-centric public spaces with reduced traffic.

Input

The new version of the tool will be designed and developed for standalone, autonomous use of the product (sufficient guidance, payment portal), allowing it to be scaled up as a product, in conjunction with associated services (leading workshops, analysis, designing urban plans), to expand implementation and impact.

We will provide the team with a detailed background and access to the tool, as well as a description of previous use cases.

Expectations

As we transition to a product-based model, we seek additional understanding of appropriate business models and marketing approaches. We expect the team to conduct market research and analysis of the competitive landscape to identify opportunities for differentiation and positioning, as well as tested pricing and payment models, leading to the definition of a coherent business model.

The team should consider consumer preferences to identify the best options for pricing and payment models. To do so, the team will perform a qualitative assessment via interviews or surveys to extract the target audiences' needs and requirements (primarily cities, but also the potential to explore other profiles). Specifics of different EU countries and their regulatory frameworks should be considered.

Desired Team Profile

The team should have a solid background in business (market analysis, strategy and business models). Familiarity or understanding of public sector and urban planning is a plus, but not essential.

Additional Information

We encourage interested teams to visit our website for additional information on the Healthy Cities Generator tool and our work on relevant case studies. We expect to work closely with the team during four to eight weeks, starting as soon as possible.

We look forward to receiving your proposals!

Related Keywords

• Sustainability