Peloton – The Makers of New Economy

Peloton (in Finnish “fearless”) supports different industries and organisations in developing products, services and social innovations to help us make resource smart low CO2 choices and to generate new profitable business opportunities for organisations. You can book a Peloton workshop for your organisation or region, help us organise a Peloton Innovation Camp, or take part in the peer-incubator for resource smart startups Peloton Club. Read more at www.peloton.me and www.pelotonclub.me.

Peloton was launched in 2009, and over the years it has evolved from a single project into a Peloton way of thinking. Peloton began as a series of workshops where organisations from different industries developed environmentally friendly products and services into easy and desirable choices, while creating new business opportunities for themselves. The year 2011 saw the first Peloton Innovation Camps that bred entirely new energy smart businesses. The Peloton Club peer-incubator came into being in the autumn of 2012. In Peloton Club startups and innovators spur each other to create the business ideas that change the world for the better.

Along the way we have been joined by partners from a range of fields: The Finnish Innovation Fund (Sitra), Ministry of Employment and the Economy, Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, the Central Union of Agricultural Producers and Forest Owners (MTK), food producers Fazer and Anton & Anton, Bonnier Publications, the S-Group network of retail and service companies, hardware stores Starkki and Puukeskus, retail store Stockmann, gardening and farming tool producer Biolan, and the Foundation for Student housing in the Helsinki Region (HOAS).

In 2012 we started off the Peloton Business of Behaviour Change research project. It is part of a broader SHAPE Shaping Markets for Sustainability project that investigates how to actively make markets more sustainable. The three-year venture is funded by The Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, and the consortium is formed by Demos Helsinki, the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), the University of Helsinki, the Aalto University, and the Agrifood Research Centre of Finland (MTT).

The majority of consumers in the Western world want to live more sustainably. How to turn this mass market into business opportunities? Peloton – Business of Behaviour Change combines the most up-to-date understanding of behavioural change with the creation of new sustainable business ventures. Studies show that behaviour changes and new routines are best formed in groups. This is why we experiment with ways for companies to co-create services with various groups, thus creating sustainable lifestyles, and model the changes in value chains when working together with these groups. Business experiments are carried out with Fazer, Biolan, and HOAS that cooperate with local, peer, and hobby groups.