Saving Lives Through Smoke-Free Companies

Scaling the number of companies that are entirely smoke-free through an innovative marketing approach and self-sustaining business model

Project Overview

The percentage of non-smokers has been increasing steadily in the Netherlands, but not fast enough. Thus, a collective of patient organizations, namely the Dutch cancer, heart, and lung foundations, have banded together for an alliance for a smoke-free Netherlands. Despite the high number of evidence-based smoking cessation interventions and products, very few, if any are actually being adopted by the people who need it most and/or operating a sustainable business model. Realizing a dramatic increase in the number of non-smokers called for a radical approach.

Action & Impact

Through design thinking sessions involving multiple stakeholders, Heartbeat Ventures developed a market-based solution to increase the number of non-smokers in a financially self-sustaining way. To achieve this, we facilitated an end-to-end innovation process, which included clarifying the landscape of users and their needs, researching best practices, creative ideating, prototype development and testing, and business model development.

Contact Person: Adnan H. Mirza

Impact in numbers:
#organizations partnered with: 6
# lives directly impacted: 1520