As part of the Business Case Challenge, where university and high school students work on real-world business challenges from industry, project partner WU Vienna arranged VALPOP roundtable discussions for the second time on the role of companies in creating social impact.

This year’s roundtables brought together winning student teams and corporate representatives from Austria’s insurance, banking, and energy sectors. Building on last year’s exchange, discussions shifted toward a specific question of increasing relevance for VALPOP: which policy and regulatory changes would help increase firms’ and civil society’s engagement in public goods such as education, inclusion, and sustainability, and which levers, such as reporting, governance, and audit standards, are already doing their job.

The following shared themes emerged across the roundtables:

• A business case remains the precondition: Both groups agreed that social impact initiatives only scale when they are financially viable. Participants stressed that engagement needs resources, commitment, and a clear business rationale to compete for internal priority. Corporate partners also described a three-part test applied before any project is pursued: Is it profitable? Is it legal? Is it the right thing to do? Students and corporate partners alike see prosperity and business opportunity as mutually reinforcing rather than competing goals.

• Existing compliance tools have limits: Reporting and audit obligations in heavily regulated sectors are already extensive, and participants did not see additional reporting requirements as a meaningful lever for increasing impact there. In less formally regulated contexts, the challenge was less about adding new obligations and more about making existing initiatives, such as inclusion programs, employee development, or community activities, more visible, credible, and connected to the company’s overall communication.

• Regulation cuts both ways: Rules designed to protect consumers can also slow the adoption of innovations with social benefit. Participants pointed to a persistent trade-off between the potential social and competitive value of new technologies and a firm’s duty of care toward existing customers, which pushes firms toward incremental testing rather than larger upfront commitments. Short-term margin requirements were named as a further structural barrier, disadvantaging projects with longer payback horizons and reinforcing incrementalism.

• Purpose and talent as internal drivers: Beyond regulation, shifting workforce expectations were identified as a strong internal push factor. Participants noted that younger employees and applicants increasingly look for employers whose purpose they can identify with, making social impact a factor in recruiting and retention, not only in external reputation. Onboarding practices such as welcome days and buddy systems were mentioned as concrete tools for translating the stated purpose into the lived experience of new employees.

• Civil society as a partner, not just a target group: Participants saw citizen and civil society engagement as something firms can actively enable rather than simply respond to through, for instance, financial literacy programs and support for entrepreneurship. Formats like the Business Case Challenge itself were highlighted as a valuable channel in both directions: firms get direct input from younger generations that is otherwise hard to access through traditional channels, while students experience that their contributions and ideas are taken seriously rather than just collected.

The Business Case Challenge is an annual event organized by WU Vienna and the funding initiative eXplore!. The aim is to promote sustainable innovation by connecting young entrepreneurs with established industries. The 2026 event, held from February to June, brought together 100 participants to tackle challenges posed by three companies: OMV (an integrated energy and chemicals firm), Erste Bank (an international bank), and Wiener Städtische (an international insurance firm). The VALPOP roundtables kicked off the award ceremony on 23 June, where the top teams were honored with prize money.