Key Takeaways
- Experts identify technology and commercialization, along with corporate sustainability-linked compensation,as the most powerful business levers for positive impact over the next five years.
- The results confirm that sustainability efforts must be profitable, scalable, and embedded, not peripheral to business operations.
- Other impactful, though less dominant business levers include employee culture, sector collaboration, and nature-based solutions.
A global survey of 844 sustainability experts across 72 countries, conducted by GlobeScan in collaboration with ERM and Volans, confirms that embedding sustainability into corporate strategy and operations is seen as most critical to driving impact over the next five years.
Technology innovation and R&D for sustainability solutions is at the top of the list, cited by seven in ten experts as highly impactful, followed by corporate sustainability-linked compensation (65%) and commercialization of sustainability through better products and services (65%). Actions like integrating sustainability within companies (64%) and adopting circular economy practices (63%) also rank in the top ten in a list of 23 potential ways that business can drive positive sustainability outcomes, reinforcing the need for structural transformation.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
Experts are shifting focus from compliance and culture-building toward systemic, performance-driven strategies. The emphasis on technology and commercialization as key levers reflects a growing consensus that sustainability must be profitable, scalable, and embedded – and not treated as peripheral.
Experts are calling on businesses to act as systems integrators, aligning across stakeholders and domains, anticipating the convergence of expectations around innovation, circularity, and supply chains, leading with transparency, and embedding sustainability into core strategy rather than approaching it as a separate or siloed initiative.
This analysis is based on a survey of 844 sustainability practitioners across 72 countries globally. To learn more about how sustainability experts believe we can best navigate this crucial inflection point in the evolution of the global sustainability agenda, explore our recent report: Sustainability at a Crossroads.
Survey Question: Please rate the extent to which each of the following could potentially lead to significant positive sustainability outcomes over the next five years. Please use a 5-point scale where 1 is the potential to have “no positive impact at all,” 3 is “moderate positive impact,” and 5 is “very significant positive impact.”
