New book argues customer value, not green claims, is the missing link

For more than a decade, sustainability has been positioned as both a moral imperative and a commercial opportunity. Companies have invested heavily in greener products, cleaner supply chains and ESG reporting, often under pressure from regulators, investors and vocal stakeholders. Yet despite this momentum, a hard truth is emerging across many sectors: sustainable business is still not reliably profitable.

That contradiction sits at the heart of Clean Winners, a new book by IMD Business School professors Goutam Challagalla and Frédéric Dalsace. Drawing on extensive research and real-world case studies, the authors argue that sustainability strategies have gone off course by misreading customer behaviour. The problem, they say, is not that sustainability is unimportant. It is that sustainability on its own rarely drives purchasing decisions.

The profitability gap in sustainable business

From consumer goods to industrial manufacturing, sustainability has become a near-universal corporate ambition. Products with eco-labels dominate shelves, annual reports highlight carbon targets, and senior leaders speak confidently about purpose-led growth. Yet financial results tell a more uneven story.

Even high-profile sustainability leaders have struggled to translate environmental ambition into consistent returns. Unilever’s public reassessment of its sustainability-led growth strategy has become emblematic of a wider challenge facing companies that assumed greener products would automatically command customer loyalty and price premiums.

According to Challagalla and Dalsace, this gap exists because many firms ask the wrong strategic question. Instead of focusing on how sustainability can solve customer problems or create superior value, companies often start by asking how to make existing products more sustainable. The result is incremental improvement that looks good on paper but does little to change buying behaviour.

Why sustainability alone rarely sells

The authors’ research suggests that most customers do care about sustainability, but it typically ranks behind other factors such as performance, convenience, reliability and cost. When forced to choose, customers often default to products that better meet their functional needs, even if greener options are available.

This does not mean sustainability is irrelevant. Rather, it becomes powerful when it enhances attributes customers already value. In Clean Winners, Challagalla and Dalsace describe this as a shift from sustainability as an added feature to sustainability as a value multiplier.

Instead of treating environmental benefits as the primary selling point, leading companies embed sustainability into solutions that save customers time, money, risk or effort. In doing so, sustainability becomes a driver of adoption rather than a reason for compromise.

From Sustainability 1.0 to Sustainability 2.0

The book introduces the concept of Sustainability 2.0, a strategic reset that puts customers back at the centre of sustainability decisions. Under this approach, companies move beyond compliance, reporting and product tweaks to redesign offerings around customer value creation.

Sustainability 2.0 reframes green investment as a means to improve productivity, reduce operating costs, extend product life or unlock new revenue streams. Environmental and social benefits still matter, but they are achieved alongside, not instead of, commercial success.

The authors outline practical frameworks to help leaders identify where sustainability can remove friction from customer experiences or outperform conventional alternatives. This includes examining total cost of ownership, operational efficiency, reliability and long-term performance, areas where sustainable solutions often have an inherent advantage.

What Clean Winners do differently

To illustrate the model, Clean Winners draws on case studies from companies that have successfully aligned sustainability with customer value.

Nespresso, for example, did not build its success on ethical sourcing alone. Its sustainability efforts reinforced product quality, brand trust and system reliability, all of which mattered deeply to customers. Michelin’s innovations in longer-lasting tyres reduce material use while also lowering costs for fleet operators. Schneider Electric’s energy efficiency solutions help industrial customers cut emissions while improving uptime and profitability.

In each case, sustainability strengthens a core customer benefit rather than standing apart from it. The companies identified as “Clean Winners” focus less on persuading customers to buy greener products and more on making sustainable choices the most attractive option available.

Implications for business leaders

The message of Clean Winners lands at a critical moment. As scrutiny of greenwashing intensifies and economic conditions tighten, companies are under pressure to justify sustainability investments with tangible results. Strategies built primarily around messaging and marginal improvements are increasingly exposed.

Challagalla and Dalsace argue that leaders need to rethink how sustainability priorities are set, measured and communicated internally. Marketing, innovation and sustainability teams must work together to identify where environmental improvements also solve real customer problems.

This shift also has implications for how success is measured. Instead of focusing narrowly on sustainability metrics or compliance milestones, organisations should track how sustainability initiatives influence customer adoption, retention and lifetime value.

Resetting the sustainability narrative

At its core, Clean Winners challenges a widely held assumption in corporate sustainability: that being greener is, by itself, a competitive advantage. The authors do not dismiss sustainability’s importance. Rather, they call for a more realistic and customer-driven approach that can deliver both impact and profit.

As companies face mounting expectations to decarbonise while remaining commercially viable, the book offers a timely framework for aligning sustainability with how markets actually work. The transition to a low-carbon economy will require innovation at scale. Challagalla and Dalsace argue that innovation will only succeed if it is grounded in customer value.

Clean Winners: Sustainability Strategy That Puts Customers First by Goutam Challagalla and Frédéric Dalsace is published by Harvard Business Review Press and released on 24 March. Priced at £25, the book is aimed at senior leaders seeking to turn sustainability from a cost centre into a durable source of competitive advantage.