Integrating Sustainability Is a Core Value Creation Lever
During my summer internship, I supported the product strategy of Sustainability Compass, a decision intelligence platform built around a comprehensive sustainability framework. I assessed the product’s outputs, identified gaps and opportunities to strengthen its value proposition, and built dashboard views that translated the analysis into practical decision support for companies, investors, and customers.
Sustainability Compass is built around an evidence-based framework that analyses how companies integrate sustainability-led leadership into governance, strategy, core activities, environmental footprint, and value creation. The work was conducted in collaboration with the Financial Economics Institute at Claremont McKenna College in the United States and originated with the support of CEDEP.
The framework takes a comprehensive view of sustainability. It examines board-level leadership, strategy, processes, operations, and a broad range of issues, including biodiversity, nature, circularity, water consumption, and greenhouse gas emissions. Sustainability Compass helps companies understand where sustainability is already integrated, where gaps exist within the business, and helps each company set priorities.
Sustainability reports and other external documents inform the analysis to help companies understand their position within the industry and identify opportunities to create value and become a market leader. Additionally, this approach allows sustainability leaders, investors, customers, and other stakeholders to assess a company’s preparedness for its sustainability-related transition. The framework is intended to become publicly available in spring 2027 under a Creative Commons license.
The Sustainability Compass looks beyond sustainability targets, emissions, and ESG reporting. It assesses how commitments influence business decisions, environmental outcomes, and value creation. Using publicly available sustainability and corporate information, the Compass builds a structured and consistent evidence base. It helps management understand whether and how sustainability is changing the business.
The same evidence answers different questions for different audiences. Sustainability leaders want to know which aspects of execution fall short. Customers want to assess a supplier’s resilience and environmental performance. Investors want to understand how sustainability-related risks, opportunities, and management responses could affect the investment thesis.
Working with Sustainability Compass customers, I saw two patterns emerge. Market leaders experiment, push boundaries, and embed sustainability into their culture. At the same time, their customers are looking for practical and varied ways to integrate sustainability across their supply chains.
My work included comparing the product with other measurement tools such as EcoVadis, developing questions for peers and business leaders, and synthesising the product’s value proposition. I also developed a pitch for Michelin Mining that positioned circularity as a way to build internal support, create value through innovation, and differentiate the company in a competitive market.
The internship gave practical meaning to a lesson from INSEAD’s Business Sustainability Thinking course: business sustainability is business continuity.
Over the medium to long-term, integrating sustainability can align incentives, optimise resources, respond to customer demand, and differentiate companies in the market. Sustainability should not be framed only as a moral obligation or a response to regulation.
After the internship, INSEAD’s Sustainable Finance course gave me another way to understand this relationship. The course framed sustainability as a two-way relationship. Providers of capital influence business decisions, while businesses affect people and the planet. Sustainability issues can also create financial risks and opportunities that influence how capital is allocated.
Taken together, these experiences showed me that sustainability outcomes depend on both business decisions and capital allocation. In a future shaped by resource constraints, minimising environmental degradation and creating business value may become one and the same effort.
This internship strengthened my interest in the role that strategy, finance, and leadership can play in advancing sustainability.
It also showed me that sustainability becomes most powerful when companies treat it as part of their value creation strategy and sustain their business over time
This internship experience was supported by the INSEAD Hoffmann Institute Impact Internship Stipend.
