HBR IdeaCast Building a Sustainability Strategy Around Customers
56 snips
Mar 31, 2026 
Goutam Challagalla, IMD professor and coauthor on customer-first sustainability, explores why most buyers will not pay more for green products. He looks at weak returns from feel-good efforts, how waste and hardship can drive innovation, why scaling means winning over indifferent customers, and how leaders can turn sustainability into real customer value.
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Use Sustainability To Create Customer Value
- Challagalla says companies ask the wrong question when they try to become “more sustainable” instead of using sustainability to create customer value.
- He argues weak willingness to pay makes sustainability-led strategy costly unless it sparks innovation, convenience, or affordability customers already want.
Why Purpose Failed Across Too Many Unilever Brands
- Challagalla says Unilever wasted effort when teams layered purpose onto too many brands without a natural fit to product benefits.
- He notes consumers struggle to name brand purposes, and cites Terry Smith's line that mayonnaise does not need a purpose.
Sustainability Scales When It Solves Waste
- Patagonia proves mission can align with margins, but Challagalla says that works mainly for niche, premium players rather than mass-market companies.
- He reframes sustainability as finding waste, inefficiency, and hardship that innovation can remove for all customers, including those uninterested in green claims.
