England

Please tell us where you live so that we can provide you with the most relevant information as you use this website.

If you are at a BFPO address please choose the country or region in which you would ordinarily be resident.

Accessibility statement

An image to illustrate Creating a successful and sustainable business short course

If we're to enable more desirable futures, we need to tackle grand challenges and prioritise delivering sustainable business impact. Improved forms of sustainable business design and innovation are key drivers to positive change in the world around us. This CPD course will give you the knowledge, latest thinking, optimised tools, methodologies and mindset to be a positive changemaker in the world. Whether you’re a seasoned professional, thinking of starting a new business venture or simply interested in this area from a personal point of view, this course will give you the skills to create and implement business for sustainable outcomes.

This Continuing Professional Development (CPD) course comprises eight units:

Unit 1

You'll begin by exploring what sustainable business is, how it functions and why it is vital to help enable desirable futures. You will examine why sustainable business is an effective way to contribute towards addressing our collective grand challenges and wicked problems. Finally, you will see how sustainable business can drive impact at the overall ecosystem level to help leave the world a better place than we found it.

Unit 2

In this unit, you'll identify how sustainable business opportunities drive positive changes and how to engage different stakeholders along a common sustainable vision and mission. You'll learn how to implement sustainable business in practice with inspirational cases and practical guidance on engaging divergent stakeholders while understanding the key needs and problems across stakeholder ecosystems to frame business opportunity spaces.

Unit 3

You'll address complex challenges and issues within multi-stakeholder settings with often divergent perspectives. You'll examine how to get started and what steps you should take to frame a specific challenge and solve it. You will learn how to create, map and analyse problems across stakeholders using systems thinking, to understand complex dynamics and their interrelatedness across your chosen challenge space.

Unit 4

This unit picks up threads from the three preceding units and moves on to building a systems map related to your challenge space. You'll decide what to include and exclude from your map given the underlying complexities of your stakeholder ecosystem and decide where you might need to intervene within your system.

Unit 5

You'll dive into the process of creative thinking to solve systemic challenges. You'll also learn how to generate a range of ideas to address your defined sustainability issues.

Unit 6

In the previous units you will have considered a wide range of creative ideation techniques to address your sustainability challenge space. You'll now use converging thinking to make decisions about which ideas to take forward and which to leave behind.

Unit 7

You'll discover how to articulate and prototype the underlying value you intend to generate across your ecosystem stakeholders. More specifically, you will understand how your intended business concept delivers value to solve the needs, problems and issues you identified early within your systems map.

Unit 8

In this final unit, it’s time to draw together the threads of your learning and focus on how you will use that learning to select the most important and critical elements to test using quick validation cycles with your key ecosystem stakeholders. You'll also learn how to put together an effective pitch to potential seed or angel investors.

Please note: some course materials are used in 'Sustainability for Business Success’, a course developed by The Open University and available on the Coursera platform. Consequently, we advise against enrolling on both.

By the end of this CPD course, you’ll learn how to:

Expert, confidential learner support is available when you need it from a learning adviser, who will respond to you directly. Other support is available via the course forum, dedicated website and computing helpdesk.

There is a practice-based assignment (PBA) which you complete at the end of the course to demonstrate how you have applied, or are intending to apply, the theories and models you have learnt. Once completed and successfully passed you will receive a digital badge and a course completion certificate which you can download as a record of your learning.

The course will require around 20 hours to complete.

You can begin at any time during the life of the course and study at your own pace. The course will be open to you for a time period of between 6 and 18 months, depending on your course registration date, and you will be advised of the specific time limitations upon enrolment.

All learning materials, exercises, study support and practice-based assignment are delivered entirely online.

As a student of The Open University, you should be aware of the content of the academic regulations, which are available on our Student Policies and Regulations website.

There are no formal academic requirements.

If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact us.

The course is delivered online and makes use of a variety of online resources. If you use specialist hardware or software to assist you in using a computer or the internet you are advised to contact us about support which can be given to meet your needs.

The OU strives to make all aspects of study accessible to everyone and this Accessibility Statement outlines what studying BGXC012 involves. You should use this information to inform your study preparations and any discussions with us about how we can meet your needs.

Start	England fee
At anytime before 31/07/2026	£250

We accept American Express, Mastercard, Visa and Visa Electron.

If this course is geared towards your job or developing your career, you could ask your employer to sponsor you by paying some or all of the fees. Your sponsor just needs to complete a simple form to confirm how much they will be paying and we will invoice them.

The fee information provided here is valid for short courses starting in the 2025/26 academic year. Fees typically increase annually. For further information about the University's fee policy, visit our

Fee Rules

You can start this course anytime.