As a host company in the BioSustainability Design Fellowship Programme, you help shape concrete, systemic solutions for a more sustainable food system – while gaining sharp, external eyes on your own operations.
A team of experienced fellows spends several weeks in your organisation across functions and along your value chain. Their mandate is to uncover high‑value sustainability needs and opportunities and translate them into implementable concepts.
By hosting fellows, you get both new perspectives on your organisation and a concrete, ready‑to‑use improvement proposal – where the insights directly feed into suggested changes.
Fellows start by building a deep understanding of how you work in practice. They:
You receive:
This process often surfaces issues that are “known but not tackled” internally, or hidden bottlenecks that cut across departments or partners.
On the basis of these observations and analyses, fellows are required to deliver a tangible improvement proposal for each host. During the immersion phase (field work) they identify and prioritise a set of concrete needs in your organisation. Together with you, they select one primary need as a local improvement case.
For this case, they develop:
You receive this as a short, structured output you can use directly in internal discussions and planning. You are not obliged to implement anything, but you gain a focused, ready‑to‑use improvement proposal grounded in thorough observation and analysis.
Across all hosts, fellows work within three interconnected challenges:
Your benefit: you get structured insight into how these three themes show up in your operations, plus exposure to ideas and practices from other parts of the value chain.
By hosting, you:
Joining BSD as a host is a concrete way to stress‑test your strategies and explore next‑step initiatives with low risk and low costs.
Many of the hardest sustainability problems in the food system sit between organisations: at the interface between farmer and processor, processor and retailer, retailer and foodservice, or kitchen and waste handler. Decisions in one place can lock others into wasteful or carbon‑intensive practices.
As a host, we ask you to help break these lock‑ins by:
In return, you gain a clearer picture of where the real bottlenecks sit, and which levers are realistically within your reach—alone or together with partners.
By hosting fellows, you get both new perspectives on your organisation and a concrete, ready‑to‑use improvement proposal – where the insights directly feed into suggested changes.
During the need‑identification phase (typically several weeks with part‑time on‑site presence), we ask for:
Observation is non‑intrusive and arranged around your operational reality. Fellows follow your safety, hygiene, and confidentiality procedures at all times.
To make the collaboration useful, we typically need:
All data sharing is governed by confidentiality and non‑disclosure agreements. Fellows can use insights for their learning and project work, but confidential details and trade secrets are protected.
We ask you to participate in a few structured sessions:
We recommend involving both management and relevant operational staff in these conversations.
To address real bottlenecks, we strongly encourage that you:
You remain in control of which partners are contacted and how. This extended access is often where the most valuable system‑level insights emerge – for both you and your partners.
Your main role is to open the door, share your reality honestly, and engage in a few focused conversations.
Your main role is to open the door, share your reality honestly, and engage in a few focused conversations.
If you recognise sustainability challenges in your part of the value chain and are willing to let a team of experienced professionals look at them with fresh eyes then you are the kind of host we are looking for.
Reach out to Mike to explore what hosting could look like in your organisation.
Mike O’Brien Smed | Field Coordinator | mkbs@dti.dk | +45 7220 3530
If you are selected as a host, it is because your activities and challenges are central to the future food system and can serve as a learning opportunity. You should not view it as hiring a consultant for your company only.
The collaboration is a strategic partnership for the benefit of not only you but the food system in general. Any intellectual property rights for solutions developed during the fellowship go to the fellows. They can proceed with the development in cooperation with the host company after the programme if desired, but they can also do it independently.
You can require that fellows sign an NDA or restrict them from certain areas or processes if desired. This is something you discuss with the BSD programme management during the onboarding process.
We work with organisations across the entire agri‑food value chain:
Hosts are selected to ensure diversity and relevance to the programme’s three themes, as well as openness to collaboration.
No, small and medium sized companies are eligible as hosts as well. However, if you are a startup mainly consisting of 1 or more founders working at a desk without real life operations yet, there is not much for fellows to observe in practice, and this is not a good match for the programme.
