Ask a roomful of executives whether their company takes sustainability seriously, and almost every hand goes up. But ask whether their sustainability investments are generating real commercial returns, and the room may get quieter.

The gap between those two answers is not a mystery. It is a strategy problem and it begins with a mindset.

Over the past five years, we have studied the sustainability strategies of hundreds of companies, surveyed more than 200 executives, and conducted in-depth interviews with C-suite leaders across B2B and B2C sectors.

What we found is that companies do not simply differ in how much they invest in sustainability. They differ fundamentally in the logic they use to guide those investments. And that logic, which we call a sustainability mindset, determines almost everything about the commercial outcome.

Our research identifies four distinct mindsets: Operators, Strivers, Enthusiasts, and Resonators. We find that roughly 30% of companies are Operators, 45% are Strivers, 15% are Enthusiasts, and just 10% are Resonators.

The question worth sitting with is: which one describes your business?

The Striver: sustainability as add-on

Strivers represent the largest single group in our research, and is by far the most recognisable. They see sustainability as a megatrend they cannot ignore, so they respond with a series of tactical investments designed to capture green-minded customers without disturbing the core business. For them, sustainability works like a multivitamin: an add-on rather than a change of diet.

Gillette’s “Planet KIND” line is a textbook example. Razors packaged in 85% recycled paper, handles made from 60% recycled plastic; these are green elements swapped in or bolted on while the core product and proposition remain unchanged. Existing customers keep buying standard Gillette. Sustainability-minded buyers have an alternative. Nobody is asked to make a trade-off.

The Striver approach is not dishonest. But it has a structural ceiling. Sustainability improves the edges without transforming the core, which means the commercial upside is limited and the reputational risk, particularly as regulators tighten their scrutiny of green claims, is quietly growing. The EU Commission has found that over half the environmental claims made by companies are potentially misleading. Strivers, who are prone to amplifying sustainability messaging beyond what their investments actually support, are particularly exposed.

Are your sustainability initiatives genuinely integrated into how your products work or are they layered on top of an otherwise unchanged offering?

The Enthusiast: sustainability as a “North Star”

Enthusiasts are the companies that sustainability advocates most admire. They are also the ones our research finds most frequently disappoint commercially. They invest heavily and broadly. They put sustainability at the centre of every decision. And they operate from a sincere conviction that being the most sustainable company in their industry is both the right thing to do and the surest path to long-term success.

Unilever under Paul Polman is the canonical case. Its Sustainable Living Plan was ambitious, genuinely ethical, and globally celebrated. For a period, the company’s “sustainable living brands” did grow faster than the rest of the portfolio. But when inflation made consumers more price-sensitive, the architecture could not hold.

By the early 2020s, investor patience had worn thin. When Hein Schumacher became CEO in 2023, he described the commitments as “too aspirational and too diffuse.” One of Unilever’s largest shareholders put it more bluntly: “A company which feels it has to define the purpose of Hellmann’s mayonnaise has in our view clearly lost the plot.”

Harley-Davidson’s LiveWire motorcycle tells a sharper version of the same story. The company’s core customers care about two things above almost everything else: the brand’s hard-edged identity and the sound of its engines. The electric LiveWire eliminated the roar and compromised the sense of freedom that Harley had always sold. As a result, the company sold a mere 653 motorcycles in all of 2025. A greener product, for most Harley customers, was simply a worse one.

The Enthusiast failure is not one of intention. It is one of assumption, specifically that customers will eventually reward purpose over performance. At scale, they do not.

Does your sustainability strategy improve what customers actually buy for or does it ask them to buy for different reasons altogether?

The Resonator: sustainability as innovation engine

Resonators are the rarest group in our research, accounting for just one in ten companies, and by a significant margin the most commercially successful. They do not ask customers to care about sustainability. They use sustainability as a lens to make their products and services genuinely better, then let the environmental benefits follow as a consequence.

The logic is captured precisely by Reckitt’s former CMO: “We have not developed a sustainability strategy. It’s always about selling superior products. What we’ve done is added a sustainability lens to our brands.”

Consider Holcim’s Durabric block, used in construction across Africa. Made from local earth, sand, cement and water, it requires no firing unlike traditional clay bricks. The result: greater compressive strength than conventional alternatives, a tenfold reduction in CO₂ emissions, and a 20% reduction in the cost of wall construction. Customers adopt it because it is stronger and cheaper. The sustainability gains are profound and entirely beside the point for buyers making the decision.

Or take East-West Seed, a Thailand-based agricultural company whose founder invested in disease-resistant, climate-resilient hybrid seed varieties for smallholder farmers. It didn’t set out to build a green brand, but focused on better seeds because inferior ones were destroying farmer livelihoods. Better seeds mean better yields, less fertilizer and healthier soil. Today the company is supporting over 160,000 farmers annually. Revenue follows because farmer income rises. Environmental benefits follow because better farming practices are less destructive ones.

The hidden advantage of the Resonator approach is that it bends the innovation curve upward. When sustainability is a compliance exercise, companies improve products incrementally. When it becomes an innovation lens, seen as a way of identifying waste, inefficiency, and unmet customer need, the pace of improvement accelerates. Sustainability does not redirect the innovation effort, it sharpens it.

Does your sustainability investment make your core product more competitive or does it operate separately from the thing customers actually pay for?

Which one are you?

Most businesses believe they sit further along this spectrum than they do. Strivers often think they are Resonators. Enthusiasts often believe their commercial underperformance is temporary, that customers will eventually come around. The evidence from our research does not support either view.

The distinction matters because the commercial consequences are not marginal. Resonators consistently outperform on return on sustainability investment. They do fewer initiatives with greater impact, because every initiative is anchored to a specific customer value, whether it is better performance, lower cost, or both. Strivers and Enthusiasts often do more, spend more, and show less.

The path to becoming a Resonator does not require abandoning existing sustainability commitments. It requires reorienting the question that guides them. Most companies ask: “How do we become more sustainable?” Resonators ask: “How can sustainability make us more competitive?”

That subtle shift, which has radical consequences, is where the commercial case for sustainability is actually won.

Goutam Challagalla and Frédéric Dalsace are professors of strategy and marketing at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland, and authors of Clean Winners: Sustainability Strategy That Puts Customers First