Embedding Sustainability to Drive Innovation
Fortune Global 500 Agtech Company
Our client aspired to play a significant role in transforming agriculture to feed a growing global population, fight climate change and regenerate the environment. With a clear strategy centered on empowering farmers and driving innovation, this Fortune Global 500 Agtech company faced a challenge: how to embed sustainability into its business in a way that delivered measurable impact.
The corporate sustainability function, which had grown organically, lacked a clear mandate and alignment across the organization. Its role in translating ambitious sustainability goals into financially viable business models was not defined.
We guided this client through a collaborative process to identify critical organizational capabilities, understand capability gaps, and align stakeholders on function’s role. With a redesigned sustainability function and shared understanding of how business units and functions would work together, the company successfully launched its sustainability strategy. Today, it remains focused on driving both short-term results and long-term impact.
Accelerating Product and Business Model Innovation
To achieve its sustainability ambitions, this organization needed fundamentally new approaches to how it operated. While high motivation and numerous “green projects” demonstrated commitment, it was clear that incremental improvements were not enough.
The rollout of innovative products created challenges for customers and sales teams, who struggled with unfamiliar marketing strategies and disruption to established practices. At the same time, new business models demanded fresh skills and competencies across the organization. Significant regional variation added further complexity.
Meanwhile, sustainability metrics were inconsistent or non-existent. Data was collected to meet external reporting requirements but not used to inform business decisions.
The company needed to address the following challenges:
- Innovation adoption: Helping customers and employees embrace new, unfamiliar products and business models.
- Skills gaps: Building the skills needed across the organization to support sustainability-focused innovations.
- Regional variability: Delivering locally relevant solutions to address regional differences.
- Metrics for impact: Transforming sustainability reporting from a compliance activity into a tool for driving decision-making and performance improvement.
Defining Organizational Capabilities to Drive Change
We worked closely with stakeholders across functions and regions to share perspectives and identify the organizational capabilities required to execute the company’s sustainability strategy.
This collaborative process revealed valuable local and functional knowledge, as well as diverse needs across the organization.
With our guidance, the central sustainability function - traditionally focused on communications and regulatory affairs – refined its role to become a strategic partner to the business.
Key steps included:
- Stakeholder engagement: Conducted interviews and facilitated workshops to create a shared understanding of the different priorities and need for support from the sustainability function.
- Clarifying organizational capabilities: Defined critical capabilities such as using data to drive performance, understanding external perspectives to support innovation, developing new business models for sustainability, accelerating and scaling local solutions.
- Defining the role of the sustainability function: Used our “Center of Expertise” framework to evaluate options and define the future role as a strategic partner to the business, moving beyond a predominantly governance and advisory role.
Delivering Results for Long-Term Impact
By the time the company’s sustainability strategy was launched, the sustainability function was fully equipped to drive meaningful change. With a renewed structure, a clear role and mandate, and alignment across regions and functions, the function had enterprise-wide momentum.
As a result of this project, the sustainability function was ready to deliver:
- Insights that drive strategic opportunities: Challenging the business to act on sustainability imperatives by translating external developments—such as shifts in the political landscape, sustainability trends, and customer needs—into actionable opportunities.
- Productive ecosystem partnerships: Building strategic external partnerships that help the company integrate sustainability into core business practices and drive shared value.
- Business model innovation: Serving as an incubator for innovative sustainability solutions, enabling adoption and scaling across the business to accelerate impact.
- Targets and governance frameworks: Defining sustainability targets and implementing policies and governance structures to ensure consistent adoption of impactful practices across the company.
- Data and insights: Governing data needs and infrastructure, turning sustainability metrics into actionable insights that drive informed decision-making.
The sustainability function has become a catalyst for change, empowering the organization to drive innovation, create business value, and lead the agriculture sector’s contribution to global climate goals.
To learn more about our work, contact us at info@orgdesignworks.com