Discover the degree to which sustainability is embedded in your strategy, what that means for your impact, risk, and long-term value, and how to embed sustainability into your core business strategy.
Most sustainability strategies fall short: some are reactive, some are pure PR, and many miss real business value.
The PI Strategy Framework helps you design a strategy that avoids pitfalls – one that reduces risks, drives growth, or strengthens your brand, depending on the ambition level that fits your organization.
Built on an analysis of hundreds of strategies, the Framework shows you:
Based on five business drivers and 40 guiding management questions, it gives you a fact-based, consistent framework that turns sustainability into actionable, profitable strategies.
What you get: a transparent read on current position, strategic options, and their business implications.
and benchmark sustainability strategies across the industry
, guiding organizations to set ambitions that match their business model, risk profile, value-creation goals, and desired impact levels
Our framework outlines five ambition levels that represent different strategic imperatives for integrating sustainability beyond legal requirements. In addition, we identify two additional variations – No Ambition and Only PR – which describe organizations that lack a credible sustainability strategy. These are not strategic approaches, and they often create significant reputational and operational risks.
As you move through the ambition levels, you’ll see a clear progression:
Note: On this page, “integration” includes the corresponding investment
(budget, staff, opex/capex) required to achieve it.
Our framework is built around three dimensions that reflect the full spectrum of strategic integration:
The framework maps a company to one of five Strategic Ambition Levels (from Legal/Stakeholder Compliance to Sustainability-Driven). This shows how deeply sustainability is embedded in strategy and whether it is likely to generate competitive advantage.
Measures the consistency and operational embedding of commitments. High ambition with low management quality = engagement focus or value-at-risk. Low ambition with high management quality = deliberate strategy choice.
The five ambition levels of the Strategy Framework are built on insights from 36 leading sustainability standards, and reflect the degree to which sustainability is embedded into the organization.
Our frameworks and tools have undergone extensive pilot-testing on a diverse sample of companies, including SMEs. This rigorous process aimed to:
Our unique methodology separately assesses Strategy, Quality, and Sustainability Performance. This approach, pioneering in its field, has yielded groundbreaking results, which were published in our “Demystifying the links between sustainability/ESG and performance” paper series. Notably, these findings hold true across sectors, years, company sizes, and prior financial performance, as confirmed by back-testing from 2019 to 2022.
Our research on major German stock-listed firms reveals a spectrum of sustainability strategies, each with distinct financial implications:
Some B2C leaders at the Sustainability-Driven level have reported 15–40% annual revenue growth. See, e.g., Patagonia and Tony’s Chocolonely.
As ambition levels increase, so do investment requirements. The key question is: Which strategy best suits your organization or investments, and is your management aligned with this goal?
Determine which strategic ambition levels are realistic and relevant to your organization.
Evaluate the financial return and business impact of each sustainability ambition level.
Benchmark your strategy against industry peers and best practices.
Select the ambition level that best supports your organization’s mid- and long-term value creation.
Identify misalignments or missed opportunities (gaps & overshoots) across your current strategy.
Align sustainability efforts with broader business goals to drive consistency and effectiveness.
Enhance communication and reporting by moving beyond surface-level PR to meaningful sustainability action.
Intention: Create a comprehensive, Impacts, Risks & Opportunities-informed sustainability strategy
Challenge: Aligning sustainability goals with business objectives and stakeholder expectations
Solutions:
Organizations can benchmark their sustainability strategies against industry peers and leaders, and gain insights into their sustainability strategies . This analysis helps organizations to identify best practices for a chosen Ambition Level and decide upon their competitive positioning.
Intention: Effectively execute sustainability initiatives across the organization
Challenge: Translating high-level strategy into governance structures, processes, actionable plans, and measurable outcomes that are consistent with your chosen Ambition Level
Solutions:
Intention: Effectively communicate sustainability strategy, management, and Impacts to stakeholders
Challenge: Presenting sustainability strategy and impacts in a clear, compelling manner
Solutions:
Once you’ve assessed your sustainability strategy, the next step is to act on it.
We’ve developed a flexible, evidence-based process to help you move from insight to integration – tailored to your ambition level, your sector, and your current position. Not every step is needed for every organization, and the order can vary depending on where you are in your journey.
Materiality assessments form the backbone of any sustainability strategy and governance. We combine quantitative impact analysis with stakeholder and expert insights to determine both your organization’s impacts on society and the environment and the financial relevance of these impacts. This ensures a clear view of how sustainability topics shape your financial performance.
Our methodology includes:
This ensures that your materiality assessment is not just compliant (if relevant), but meaningful. It helps you prioritize actions, allocate resources, and communicate with confidence.
