CSR Europe’s Future Lab: The Art of Selling Sustainability
On 4 June 2025 we kicked off the inaugural session of CSR Europe’s Future Lab: The Art of Selling Sustainability, a new peer-led space for strategy leaders, sustainability officers, and business changemakers to turn sustainability into a true driver of competitiveness, growth, and lasting value.
In partnership with Deloitte Belgium, we explored real-world business challenges, shared insights across sectors, and started shaping a new playbook: one that moves beyond compliance to embed sustainability into the heart of commercial decision-making.
The 2.5-hour session was highly productive and cantered around three breakout discussions, each designed to explore a key question on embedding sustainability in business.
Why is sustainability a priority (or pressure) inside your business? What’s driving or blocking internal alignment and motivation on sustainability?
What is working (or not) when it comes to integrating sustainability into the business? A reflection to internal processes, success stories, roadblocks, and leadership dynamics.
How Do We Move Forward? What strategies, capabilities, or collaborations help move from belief to impact?
One key takeaway is that peer-to-peer case sharing is incredibly valuable, especially during periods when regulations are still evolving. There’s a strong demand for cross-sector learning, and sustainability is no longer about why it matters, but how to implement it effectively. Addressing the drivers and blockers of sustainability implementation at the business level is crucial to ensure that legislation reflects real-world challenges, and that capacity-building efforts can help businesses take the next steps.
Below are some reflections from the insightful discussions held during the first Workshop of the Future Lab:
Companies today, whether driven by regulatory pressure, competitiveness, or stakeholder expectations, are increasingly required to disclose their ESG practices and strategies, while also demonstrating tangible business value. However, this is far from simple. Many challenges continue to hinder the translation of long-term sustainability goals into short-term performance metrics.
It’s with these challenges in mind that CSR Europe launched the Future Lab series. Developed in collaboration with our members and strategic partners, the series aims to co-create a practical, shared understanding of what it takes to shift from ESG compliance to ESG-driven value creation.
The first Future Lab session brought to light a nuanced set of drivers and challenges shaping the way companies approach sustainability. It’s now widely seen, as pointed out, as a strategic priority driven by multiple reason, for instance, to meet a sense of purpose, stay ahead of regulations, remain competitive, or respond to growing pressure from stakeholders. Yet, as highlighted during the discussions, many still face significant barriers, such as unclear responsibilities, stretched teams, and a gap between big goals and real-world action.
While corporate-level commitments are in place, the challenges go beyond internal adaptation. Companies must also navigate a constantly evolving policy landscape, one that often struggles with misalignment, weak connections to commercial goals, and an overreliance on finance-driven compliance. Progress is further slowed by capacity gaps and lack of coordination across teams and functions.
As discussions shifted from belief to impact, participants highlighted progress in leadership, strategy, and collaboration. Still, regulatory uncertainty, internal misalignment, and the challenge of quantifying long-term value remain. That’s why one thing became clear: companies are moving at very different speeds on their sustainability journey. Some are just starting to build compliance systems, others are working to integrate ESG into their operations and strategy, and a few are already pushing the boundaries of innovation and industry leadership. Moving forward will demand clarity, consistency, and stronger cross-sector coalitions.
Final Remarks
The first Future Lab marked the beginning of a new kind of strategic exchange: it is grounded in real challenges, honest dialogue, and shared ambition. It's a space that encourages participants to stay engaged by sharing case studies, exchanging ideas, and reflecting internally on their own company’s sustainability efforts.
The discussion confirmed that sustainability can drive growth and competitiveness, but only when it’s fully understood, well-resourced, and embedded into core business operations. CSR Europe and Deloitte will now turn these insights into a draft roadmap, to be further developed in the Art of Selling Sustainability roundtable at the Sustainable Industry Summit (October 23–24), and finalized in Future Lab second Workshop (November 2025, date TBC)
Looking forward, CSR Europe will explore how different company journeys align with broader transformation patterns, drawing on tipping point theories and change management frameworks, to develop tailored pathways for acceleration.
Don't miss what’s next, stay tuned for new insights, tools, and collaboration opportunities
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