Why Sustainability Leadership Must Evolve: 6 Momentum Building Strategies for Market Transformation
Introduction
Market leadership is no longer about who moves first—it’s about who brings others with them.
In today’s fast-changing economy, isolated sustainability leadership isn’t enough. To drive system-wide transformation, executives must mobilize the mainstream—engaging industry peers, influencing policy, and shaping public sentiment.
This article explores how businesses can rethink their approach to build momentum for change. You'll learn six strategic actions that are needed: shifting mindsets and pace, pursuing market-wide change, building capabilities for the future, innovating to ensure value, the need for system wide change, and the need to build momentum.
Together, these steps offer a blueprint for turning sustainability from siloed effort into scalable advantage.
1. Shift Mindsets and Accelerate
A global economic and industrial reset is accelerating—and business must catch up.
We’re entering a new era, where the rules of value creation are being rewritten by planetary limits, social pressures, and fast-moving innovation. This shift isn’t driven by ideology. It’s driven by climate volatility , resource scarcity , and social instability ⚖️—and it’s reshaping how economies produce, consume, and grow.
Change is happening, but it's still far too slow.
📉 The risk? Systemic disruption and competitive irrelevance.
📈 The opportunity? Market leadership for those who act now.
Systemic risks—from extreme weather and biodiversity loss to inequality and geopolitical unrest—are already impacting markets, supply chains, and investor confidence. Nature (2024) reports that climate disruption to global supply chains could lead to $25 trillion net losses by mid-century. And, just look at how water scarcity is reshaping agriculture in India, or how policy shifts are disrupting global auto manufacturing as EV adoption surges.
Some sectors—like renewables and circular packaging—are beginning to scale. But first movers often still face unprofitable conditions. This is why most businesses remain locked in incremental action, even those ranked highly on ESG. They’re operating within outdated systems that reward short-term profit over long-term resilience.
📌 Here’s the truth:
No company can transform the system alone. But businesses that coordinate to reshape market rules, align incentives, and push for policies that level the playing field, will gain a first-mover edge, de-risk their strategy, and create long-term value.
This is not just about being a “leader.” It’s about protecting your license to operate in a rapidly changing world. Action is needed to overturn decades of business perception that tackling climate, nature and social disruption risks is ‘soft’ or ‘ethical’ rather than strategic and value-enhancing. The companies that embrace transition as a competitive strategy—not a compliance task—will shape future markets and outperform those who resist change.
2. Pursue Market-Wide Change
It’s time to stop what’s not working—and double down on what drives real change.
Too many businesses are stuck in defensive, reputation-led ESG strategies—box-ticking, lengthy disclosures, or “hero projects” that signal intent but don’t shift markets. These approaches might buy time, but they won’t build resilience or future competitiveness.
Instead, redirect leadership energy and investment to where it matters:
Preparing for tech, policy, and investor disruption
Shaping the market rules that define value creation
Driving core transformation—not just messaging
📑 On reporting: Many teams are drowning in disclosures with little strategic value. Use mandatory reporting to drive decisions, manage risks, and build resilience—not just to tick boxes.
When it comes to voluntary disclosures, CISL’s Competing in the Age of Disruption (2025) finds that most commitments failed to deliver systemic change. Why? Without binding incentives, leaders who act face competitive disadvantages—while laggards lobby to delay progress.
Expecting businesses to unilaterally uphold voluntary commitments that undermine competitiveness isn’t just unrealistic—it’s a risk to meaningful policy reform.
✅ Voluntary disclosures should only continue if they:
Attract investment
Enhance competitiveness
Build trust with key stakeholders
If reporting becomes a burden without benefit, engage regulators—not to block change, but to build smarter frameworks that accelerate it.
This means:
Reshaping policy and market frameworks: Working to change the regulatory environment and market structures that determine what businesses prioritize and how they succeed
Redirecting business effort and investment: Putting energy into transforming core business practices and aligning them with future market shifts and sustainability goals.
Collaborating with regulators: Helping design smarter, more effective regulations that genuinely support transition goals, rather than opposing regulation altogether.
Your ESG data isn’t just for compliance. It’s a lever for transformation, competitive positioning, and system change.
3. Build Capabilities
Winning the Transition Economy Demands More Than Good Intentions.
A new era of economic disruption is here—and most businesses aren’t ready. Competing in this environment requires more than strong ESG intentions. It demands new capabilities, cross-functional alignment, and bold, forward-looking leadership.
Traditional business analysis—based on historical data, static risk models, and narrow benchmarks—no longer holds up in markets shaped by policy shocks, tech breakthroughs, and shifting consumer demands. To stay ahead, leaders must lean into:
Strategic use of climate and systems data 🛰️
Forward-looking risk and opportunity modelling
Early identification of tipping points and regulatory windows
Disruptors win not by avoiding risk—but by taking calculated, intelligent risks before others do. Yet many corporate cultures still favour incrementalism over innovation, tracking past performance instead of shaping future markets.
This is no longer a siloed issue—it's boardroom-critical. I’ve always championed the need for sustainability to be fully integrated into governance, procurement, investor relations, and commercial planning. Delegating it to a small team can lead to fragmentation and missed opportunity, through no-ones fault.
📌 A key question every executive team should ask:
“What would need to be true for us to make transition our competitive advantage?”
To answer this, companies must:
📈 Apply financial discipline to sustainability investments—just as they would to M&A or new market entry. Too often, high-impact initiatives are viewed as costs rather than growth drivers. This leads to missed upside, including:
Cost reductions through efficiency
Regulatory preparedness
Supply chain resilience
Access to new markets and capital
And critically, most businesses underestimate the cost of standing still.
📣 Shape the game, don’t just play it. While many firms have historically influenced regulation to manage risk, few have built the policy and strategic communication capabilities needed to shape markets in their favour.
Now is the time to:
Build internal expertise in political strategy and advocacy
Align trade associations with transition goals
Craft narratives that build public support and investor confidence 🗣️
The companies that act now—investing in future-fit capabilities and aligning leadership from the top—won’t just weather the coming shifts. They’ll own the next era of market leadership.
4. Innovate to Create and Protect Value
Future competitiveness won’t be defined by how well companies defend the status quo—it will be earned by those who invest early in transformative technologies and business models that reshape industries.
Market transformation is already underway, and it doesn’t wait for consensus. It happens when a few key players act boldly—setting new benchmarks, creating momentum, and triggering tipping points. That’s how systemic change takes hold.
Forward-looking companies are already scaling breakthrough innovations—green hydrogen, AI-powered energy optimisation, alternative proteins, and advanced battery storage. These aren’t pilot projects; they’re new market foundations. Early movers set standards, shape regulation, and unlock first-mover advantage.
🧩 Coordinated Action is a Competitive Strategy
Some transitions can’t be made alone. Sectors like food, energy, mobility, and construction rely on shared infrastructure, aligned regulations, and connected supply chains. Pre-competitive collaboration—with startups, investors, and regulators—is essential to reimagine these systems and accelerate transformation.
🛍️ Supply Alone Isn’t Enough—Demand Must Shift Too
Creating better solutions isn’t sufficient if markets aren’t ready to absorb them. The goal is to make sustainable choices the default, not the niche. Businesses that shift demand don’t just outperform—they reshape the market itself.
⚡ Trigger Tipping Points Before Others Do
Transformation starts when key players move first—universal buy-in follows success. Companies should look for high-leverage tipping points where investment and action create self-reinforcing momentum.
Target:
Technologies approaching cost parity and mass adoption
Regions with favourable policy, infrastructure, or social readiness
Clusters of innovation where converging tech unlocks new paradigms
(Think: EVs, where software, battery cost declines, and infrastructure combined to shift an entire sector.)
But not all tipping points lead to progress. Negative tipping points—climate breakdown, biodiversity loss, social unrest—are accelerating. If we fail to engineer the right market shifts, destabilisation will define the future.
🔍 What Executives Should Do Now
Identify emerging markets near breakthrough moments
Invest in clusters of innovation—not isolated pilots
Embed systemic risk and transition opportunities into strategy
Partner across value chains to create demand and scale
Quantify the cost of delay—and the value of first-mover advantage
The next wave of market leaders won’t just react to transition.
They’ll lead by engineering it.
5. Change the System
The Future Belongs to Businesses Bold Enough to Shape the System
The most forward-thinking companies aren’t just adapting to change—they’re designing the conditions for long-term success. Competing in tomorrow’s economy means going beyond optimization and actively reshaping the systems that define how markets work.
That means dismantling policy and market barriers that hold back cleaner, fairer, and more efficient solutions—and helping to build incentives that reward innovation, resilience, and shared value.
Markets don’t transform on good intentions alone. Strategic, politically literate engagement is now a core leadership skill. Executives must:
Frame policy as a path to competitive advantage
Signal investment readiness and innovation capacity
Push back on opposition that slows or distorts progress
Use commercial, political, and cultural influence to unlock reform
Effective campaigns should focus on three key criteria:
Materiality – Which policies will shift the most market value?
Scale – Where can tipping points be triggered?
Feasibility – Where is momentum or political opportunity already building?
Business has a critical role in making the economic case for reform. This is not just about lobbying—it’s about helping governments see what’s possible, practical, and urgent. That includes:
Reframing the public debate 🧠 – Emphasize the economic wins of smart action, and the real costs of delay. Speak in terms of jobs, savings, and resilience—not just emissions and risk.
Engaging in transition planning 🗂️ – Align industry expertise with policy to ensure changes are commercially viable and regionally grounded.
De-risking the transition 🧳 – Support mechanisms that help displaced workers and affected regions thrive in the new economy.
Defending fair, open markets 🏛️ – Publicly support the institutions—free media, independent academia, rule of law—that ensure transparency, accountability, and stable investment conditions.
🔻 Failing to act not only forfeits opportunity - it risks stranded assets, rising regulatory pressure, and eroded trust from investors and society alike.
This is complex, but not unmanageable. Businesses should prioritize efforts where policy change meets impact, scale, and political timing. Those who act early to shape market rules won’t just adapt more effectively—they’ll lead the transition on their terms.
6. Build Momentum for Change
From Lone Leaders to Mass Momentum: Reframing Sustainability Strategy
For over a decade, sustainability leadership in the private sector has been driven by a small group of high-profile CEOs and progressive multinationals. The assumption? That their bold commitments would trigger a market-wide tipping point.
That hasn’t happened.
While individual leadership has driven visibility, it has not delivered the scale or speed of change needed. It's now clear that success depends not on isolated frontrunners—but on mobilizing the mainstream. We must focus on moving the middle to create the broad-based momentum essential for systemic market transformation.
🏛️ Industry influence must align with transformation. Businesses should activate their trade associations, reform obstructive lobbying efforts, and ensure all political engagement supports long-term value creation and transition goals.
Silent endorsement of outdated positions undermines credibility and slows progress.
♟️ Winning public support is now a strategic priority. It’s no longer enough to rely on corporate comms and net zero targets. Behavioural economics tells us: facts don’t move people—stories do. Sustainability must be framed as a source of prosperity, resilience, and fairness, not an elite-driven sacrifice.
To shift public sentiment and support transition-aligned policy, businesses must:
Craft a compelling vision 🧵 – Use storytelling, marketing, and behavioural insights to make sustainability aspirational, not abstract.
Lead the narrative 📰 – Shape the media conversation, positioning transition as job-creating, future-proofing, and essential for national strength.
Empower stakeholders 🗳️ – Involve communities, employees, and citizens in shaping transition plans. People support what they help build.
Counter disinformation ⚠️ – Use clear, consistent messaging to expose the real risks of inaction—economic instability, inequality, and lost opportunity.
Be boldly transparent 🪞 – Trust is built through honesty. Share the trade-offs and choices ahead, just as wartime and pandemic leaders did.
🔍 The lesson is clear: leading in this era means moving beyond top-down declarations. It means changing minds, building coalitions, and shaping culture.
The future won’t be won by the loudest voice, but by those who bring the most people with them.
Conclusion
Strategy, Scale, and Influence Will Define Tomorrow’s Leaders
To lead the transition economy, businesses must go beyond incrementalism and embrace system-level change. This means three things:
1️⃣ Strategic alignment across capabilities, investments, and reporting,
2️⃣ Scaling innovation that reshapes markets and unlocks new value, and
3️⃣ Mobilizing influence from policy, through finance, to public support, to accelerate change.
Executives who integrate these levers into core business strategy won’t just manage risk—they’ll shape resilient, future-fit markets. The next era of leadership won’t be defined by who moves first, but by who moves with purpose—and brings others along. The time to lead is now.
