Idea in Brief

The Usual Approach

Most sustainability initiatives today focus on improving the sustainability of products and operations in legacy or adjacent markets or on achieving sustainability gains by exploring new markets with a more diverse set of products.

A New Frontier

Leaders should also embrace a new path to sustainability, in which brands actively partner with customers to achieve ongoing impact.

The Strategies

This article describes a practical framework for creating sustainability strategies that take into account both dimensions—markets and customer engagement. The model lays out the four key ways that legacy companies can nurture growth in their sustainability efforts.

Practically every day one company or another announces a new sustainability commitment or launches an ad campaign about how it’s helping people and the planet. Many of those initiatives focus on improving the sustainability of products and operations in legacy or adjacent markets or on achieving sustainability gains by exploring new markets with a more diverse set of products. This is a variation on the classic “where to play/how to win” strategy, familiar to most executives. Fewer leaders, however, are exploring an important new frontier in sustainability, in which brands actively partner with customers to achieve ongoing impact.
A version of this article appeared in the November–December 2022 issue of Harvard Business Review.
Read more on Brand management or related topics Competitive strategy, Consumer behavior, Strategy, Sustainable business practices and Environmental sustainability