Holistic impacts of investing in Indigenous businesses

Partner

Supply Nation

Challenge
Supply Nation were seeking a more culturally meaningful model to understand the holistic benefits of investing in Indigenous businesses.

Approach

To inform the development of a culturally relevant and holistic framework, we first conducted a ‘knowledge review’ of relevant academic and other literature. We reviewed the material with both an academic and cultural lens.

We then coordinated a series of in-depth codesign interviews with seven Indigenous business owners from a range of business types and locations across Australia. We asked about their experiences as business owners amongst their communities and cultural landscapes.

Both of the above processes validated the same key themes which we collated to create a holistic framework to understand the value of supporting the growth of Indigenous businesses.

Key Findings

The knowledge review and every single Indigenous business owner interviewed validated that Indigenous businesses core purpose is to serve the community. That always comes before money. They also employ Indigenous people, boosting employment amongst their communities. The following key themes emerged as being important and interrelated for all Indigenous businesses.

• Indigenous values and worldviews

• Working for the community

• Culture through work

• Empowerment through work

As pathways to wellbeing, these themes were identified as ‘ways to get there’, each with a range of ‘stepping stones’ or underlying indicators of wellbeing. Benefits for Indigenous businesses were clearly not just to their business, but to themselves, their employees and communities. The next step is to develop and apply measurements, monitoring and evaluation to this framework.

Cairney and Yamaguchi, 2022. Measuring the holistic impacts of investing in Indigenous businesses: a knowledge review. Supply Nation Research and Policy Brief No. 4

Supply Nation’s ‘Story of Change’ Supply Nation Research and Policy Brief No. 6)

A holistic framework of pathways to wellbeing that come with supporting Indigenous businesses.