Speaking at Encontros com Futuro, Portugal’s National Sustainability Day organized by Publico and REN

Innovation and Sustainability: From Parallel Disciplines to Strategic Synergy

My talk focused on the fundamental and urgent need to integrate sustainability and innovation—disciplines that are often treated separately—into a coherent strategy. While innovation equips us with the tools to navigate complexity and uncertainty, sustainability provides the direction and ethical imperative for long-term value creation. Together, they form the basis for what I call Sustainability-Driven Innovation.

A key point I shared was the distinction between invention and innovation. Invention is a novel idea; innovation is that idea brought to market to create real value. Similarly, sustainability is no longer a compliance task or cost centre—it must be seen as a value creation engine, deeply embedded in strategy, operations, and culture.

Addressing Complexity with Innovation Capabilities

Sustainability projects are often marked by uncertainty: they involve multiple stakeholders, evolving regulatory environments, changing consumer expectations, and shifting planetary boundaries. These characteristics mirror those of innovation projects, which also thrive under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity.

For this reason, I emphasized that organizations must adopt innovation management capabilities—such as agile methods, stakeholder co-creation, and portfolio thinking—to manage sustainability initiatives effectively. Traditional project management methods are often ill-suited to the evolving and complex nature of sustainability transitions.

The Sustainability-Driven Innovation Matrix

To support organizations on this journey, I introduced the Sustainability-Driven Innovation Matrix—a practical tool I developed to help teams assess and evolve their strategic positioning across two dimensions: sustainability maturity and innovation maturity.

The matrix identifies three zones:

• Operational Efficiency: Doing the same things, better.

• Organizational Transformation: Changing how value is created and delivered.

• Ecosystem Symbiosis: Creating new value in partnership with others.

These zones reflect increasing levels of integration, ambition, and complexity—and require different capabilities and mindsets to succeed.

Strategic Moats Through Innovation

I illustrated these concepts through real-world examples:

• Paptic (Finland): A company blending paper and textile fibers to produce packaging materials that are compatible with existing plastic-processing machinery. This unique capability acts as a strategic moat—a competitive advantage that is hard to replicate due to material properties, supply chain complexity, and customer integration.

• Stora Enso (Sweden): A traditional forestry company investing in bio-based battery technology, transforming core competencies in wood and pulp into future-oriented innovation. This is a powerful case of organizational transformation aligned with sustainability.

• Humstatic (Austria): A startup creating compostable sound insulation panels from agricultural waste. Their business model exemplifies ecosystem symbiosis, where waste streams become inputs, and partnerships extend innovation impact beyond a single company.

These examples demonstrate how sustainability and innovation, when integrated strategically, can create not only environmental and social value, but also robust competitive positioning.

A Call to Action

In closing, I argued that sustainability initiatives should not fail due to poor project execution. If an idea fails, it should be because it was not the right idea—not because it was mismanaged. We no longer have the time to afford poor execution.

I invited participants to view sustainability not as a cost, but as a strategic opportunity—a way to build organizational capabilities that are hard to imitate and essential for long-term survival and differentiation.

This perspective also underpins Global Green Action Day, an initiative I lead across several European cities, where organizations address real-world challenges through innovation sprints aligned with UN World Environment Day. It is a concrete manifestation of how innovation methodologies can be applied to accelerate sustainability transitions across systems.

Final Reflection

One of my favourite metaphors comes from strategy literature: companies must build moats around their business—capabilities that protect their competitive advantage. Integrating sustainability and innovation is not only wise—it is a way to deepen these moats and future-proof the enterprise.

Or, as the proverb I shared in closing reminds us: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.”

Feel free to reach out if you would like to explore how boards and leadership teams can more effectively guide their organizations through innovation and sustainability. Whether through keynotes, workshops, or strategic advisory, I am always open to meaningful conversations and impactful collaborations.

Read more about the event in Publico and in Forbes Portugal. 

All photos by Nelson Valente.