Sustainability Labs

Unlocking the potential of sustainability for growth and impact

By Dr. Maite Ibarretxe

Sustainability has become a priority for most organizations, yet too often it remains at the periphery, treated as a reporting exercise, a regulatory response, or a communication strategy. To truly unlock its full potential for growth and impact, and create the the leverage needed to propel prosperity, sustainability must move from the margins into the DNA of how organizations think, decide, and act.

One way to achieve this is through strategic Sustainability Labs. These labs are not physical spaces, but dynamic environments where organizations can experiment, orchestrate, and embed new ways of working. They bring together diverse stakeholders, leaders, employees, partners, and communities in a setting designed for collaboration, trust, and innovation.

Why Labs? Traditional approaches to sustainability often fail because they are linear and siloed. Labs, in contrast, operate as ecosystems. They allow organizations to test ideas, cocreate solutions, and align strategy with execution in real time. This is crucial when addressing sustainability challenges that cut across supply chains, business units, and even national borders.

A lab setting accelerates learning, reduces resistance to change, and creates ownership by
embedding sustainability in daily decision-making.

Embedding Sustainability into DNA . For many organizations, the real challenge is not setting sustainability goals, but bringing their people along in the transition. Ambitions on paper rarely translate into change if employees and managers see sustainability as abstract or disconnected from their daily work. This is where a Lab approach becomes powerful: it creates a safe space for dialogue, experimentation, and co-creation. By engaging staff directly, a Lab helps them connect sustainability to their own roles and responsibilities, turning resistance into ownership. In this way, sustainability stops being an external demand and becomes part of the organization’s identity, woven into its DNA.

The use of Labs to unlock Leverage. Labs are most succesful when they create leverage through their ability to amplify impact.

My Leverage Wheel framework is designed on that principle.
It rests on three interacting elements - Excellence, Trust and Innovation - which, when activated together, create the leverage needed to unlock sustainability’s full potential.

Excellence provides the rigor and credibility that keep labs grounded, moving from complaince to competitiveness Trust is the currency of collaboration and makes outcomes durable. Innovation delivers the breakthroughs and designs for resiliance and growth.

When brought together, these elements help create the Leverage needed to achieve our higher goals.

Together, they turn Labs into powerful vehicles for business success.

What makes labs so valuable is their dual purpose: they address today’s pressing sustainability challenges while building the foundations for tomorrow’s growth. By integrating sustainability into organizational DNA, companies gain agility, attract talent, and build trust legitimacy with stakeholders. Just as importantly, they are better positioned to
innovate, whether in products, services, or business models, unlocking new markets and
opportunities.

My invitation is clear: Let us unlock the full potential of sustainability as a lever for growth and impact. By creating Sustainability Labs within our organizations, and Sustainability Dialogues cross borders we can embed sustainability into culture and governance, align economic performance with societal value, and create the leverage needed for systemic change.

Sustainability has more to offer than meets the eye!
An opportunity, a strategic lens through which we can reimagine business, aligning societal value with economic performance.

It is about designing tomorrow’s Shared Prosperity and Labs give us the unqiue platform to
propel that shift.