INDUSTRY INSIGHT all of it: sustainability almost never triggers a purchase on its own. At best, it’ s a reason to care. It becomes a reason to buy only when it makes the product or service genuinely better. the service of strategy. Instead of a stand-alone aspiration, it becomes a driver of innovation.
What Resonators do differently
The companies that have understood this( which we call Resonators in our book) are the quiet winners of the sustainability era. They are not asking customers to change their values. They are using sustainability as a lens for innovation and winning the market as a result.
The wrong question has been driving strategy
Most companies begin with a question that sounds sensible but leads them astray:“ How do we become a more sustainable company?” The framing is well-intentioned. The strategic consequences are often damaging.
When sustainability becomes the primary objective, companies start making trade-offs that their customers never asked for. They emphasise environmental credentials while quietly weakening performance or affordability. Think of it this way: nobody drinks fair-trade coffee to save a farmer. They drink coffee for the pleasure or stimulation that caffeine brings them. The fact that buying it supports farmer livelihoods might be a welcome bonus, but it is rarely the reason people buy coffee in the first place.
Resonators ask a different question entirely:“ How can sustainability help us create more value for customers?” That subtle shift moves sustainability from the centre of strategy to
Resonators are not defined by how much they invest in sustainability. They are defined by what they use it for. Where most companies measure success by sustainability impact per dollar spent, Resonators measure it differently: how much customer value did this sustainability investment create?
The distinction produces fundamentally different outcomes. Consider Electrolux, the Swedish appliance manufacturer. Rather than simply marketing its washing machines as greener, Electrolux redesigned the drum to be gentler on garments so they would reduce wear and tear and clothes would last longer. Extending garment life by just nine months cuts carbon footprint, water use and waste by 20 to 30 %. But that’ s not what sells the machine. What sells it is that customers keep their favourite clothes looking better for longer while saving money. The sustainability gains are real and significant. They are also, for most buyers, secondary.
Or take East-West Seed, a Thailand-based company with revenues over US $ 200 million that supplies vegetable seeds to smallholder farmers across tropical regions. Its founder invested heavily in developing hybrid seeds that are disease-resistant and climate-resilient because inferior seeds and poor farming practices were destroying farmer livelihoods. Better seeds mean better yields, less fertiliser, fewer pesticides and healthier soil. Today, East- West Seed supports more than 160,000 farmers a year with crop planning, pest management and climate-smart techniques. The environmental benefits are immense. But what drives adoption is economics: farmers earn more.
Sustainability as an innovation accelerator
Perhaps the most underappreciated finding from our research is the following: treating sustainability as an innovation lens does not divert a company’ s innovation efforts. It accelerates them.
Authors and Professors, Goutam
Challagalla and Frédéric Dalsace
John Deere provides another vivid example. The company discovered that up to 75 % of herbicide was being sprayed indiscriminately, rather than only where needed and that more
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