Announcing Our 2018 Flourish Prizes Celebration Plan

A global, virtual celebration in May 2018 will showcase the 17 best-of-the-best AIM2Flourish stories published in 2017 — with regional in-person and online events

How might we best celebrate the 2018 Flourish Prizes, recognizing the 17 best-of-the-best stories published on AIM2Flourish.com in 2017? Well, this cake might be a good start. (Twitter photo from @2030AgendaCH)

We’re excited to share our plans to select and celebrate the second annual Flourish Prizes with you. This May, the AIM2Flourish team will host a global, multi-day, virtual celebration via Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Zoom video conference and more. We’ll host live conversations, share photos, stream video, and participate in Twitter chats — all to lift up the stories of our 2018 Flourish Prizes winners.

In addition, we will collaborate with global colleagues to promote AIM2Flourish and the 2018 Flourish Prize winners at in-person events and regional celebrations. As an example, we will host a Cleveland-based Flourish Prizes celebration to bring the local Ohio, USA, community together.

Selecting the 17 winners is a huge job, since we will have over 600 eligible student-written stories about positive and profitable business innovations that were published on AIM2Flourish.com in 2017. Every one of these stories comes out of an Appreciative Inquiry interview that a student has with an inspiring business leader, and showcases how business can and are achieving the UN Global Goals. (Take a look now and be inspired by our more than 800 AIM2Flourish Innovation Stories.)

To meet this challenge, and to foster the spirit of Goal 17: Partnerships for the Goals, we are expanding the number of distinguished people who will help us select the final 17 winners this year. The 2018 Flourish Prizes Jury will include business leaders who were awarded 2017 Flourish Prizes, as well as Fowler Center Advisory Board members, and esteemed colleagues from academia and the Cleveland business community. (“Meet the 2018 Flourish Prizes Jury” link coming soon.)

Our Thinking: Make the 2018 Flourish Prizes a Lower-Cost, Lower-Carbon, More Inclusive Celebration
Last year’s inaugural Flourish Prizes celebration was extra special because we were able to award the Flourish Prizes as part of the Fourth Global Forum. Held every three years, the Global Forum Series celebrates business innovation for good and is hosted by our home institution, the Fowler Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at the Weatherhead School of Management-Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH, USA. The Fifth Global Forum will be in 2020.

For these next two “in-between” years — 2018 and 2019 — we decided to get creative and make our celebration more global, inclusive, affordable, and to model low-carbon collaboration.

2017 Flourish Prizes winners celebrate at the June 2017 Fourth Global Forum in Cleveland, OH. This photo was taken at a reception held at the Cleveland Art Museum. It was an incredible event, and we are so glad that we were able to support so many 2017 Flourish Prizes winners to come to the Fourth Global Forum.

Early in 2018, the AIM2Flourish team will share an online toolkit for AIM2Flourish schools to hold regional and local celebrations, and step-by-step guidance for joining the 2018 Global Flourish Prizes Virtual Celebration in May. Stay in touch and up to date by following us on Twitter and Facebook.

We can’t wait to share more detailed plans with you. Let us know if you’d like to be part of the 2018 Flourish Prizes celebration team. We’d love your help to design materials, run social media, translate resources, host regional events, interview winners, share photos, and more. Please contact AIM2Flourish Director Claire Sommer at claire@AIM2Flourish.com.