Article

Dan Salas, Caroline Hernandez

Dan Salas and Caroline Hernandez illustrate how existing nature positive programs can be the best choice for companies at certain maturity levels in their nature engagements. Across the world, there are countless such programs, and the authors focus on a particularly successful approach: the Rights-of-Way as Habitat Working Group (ROWHWG) at the University of Illinois Chicago. This group of practitioners, academics, and corporations has developed and deployed the largest multi-stakeholder conservation agreement in the US.

Article

Catherine Drumheller, Matthew Ling, Laura Lawlor

Catherine Drumheller, Matthew Ling, and Laura Lawlor describe an approach for valuing the benefits of nature to ensure investments are made in the most economical and impactful ways. The authors identify six categories of benefits that can be realized from nature-based solutions, and those benefits are associated with indicators and criteria that provide a screening tool for project designers. This tool can be used to develop scores using standard ecosystem accounting principles and other methods to measure impacts on human and nature communities.

Article

Charlie Briggs

Charlie Briggs unifies science-based targets and reporting requirements to show that adopting such targets can satisfy current and pending reporting while allowing companies to use targets to take action, build institutional knowledge and capacity in nature, secure buy-in and funding for future nature-related needs, and enhance stakeholder relationships with credible targets that can be openly communicated. The article uses examples from business and other sectors to show the future-focused benefits of adopting science-based targets that contribute to business resilience.

Article

Enrique Castro Leon, Katrina Pugh, Jose Zero

Enrique Castro-Leon, Katrina Pugh, and Jose Zero take another approach to supporting business resilience. They believe we need a carbon-accounting system that is clear, credible, transparent — and can stretch along supply chains and be compared across businesses. Starting with US generally accepted accounting practices, the authors advocate for an approach based on the accrual method to provide a more accurate picture across time and promote the idea that carbon investments in impermanent solutions like forest planting should be accounted for just like a commodity with a value that changes depending on circumstances.

Article

Margaret Waldock, Jonathan Wagar, David Jeffrey Ringer

A net benefit for nature is central to the activities happening at Duke Farms in Hillsborough, New Jersey, USA, a campus-like setting in a peri-urban landscape. Margaret Waldock, Jonathan Wagar, and David Jeffrey Ringer describe how Duke Farms addressed greenhouse gas emissions, biodiversity loss, and carbon sequestration using a science-based approach that supported the location’s strategic objectives with smart decision-making and an authentic discussion of trade-offs.

Advisor

Curt Hall

Cutter Expert Curt Hall explores small language models (SLMs), which are gaining attention for their ability to deliver advanced AI capabilities with lower computational costs than LLMs. Optimized for efficiency, SLMs excel in domain-specific applications like customer service, healthcare, finance, and retail, where real-time processing and reduced resource consumption are key.

Advisor

Amit Vikram, Vikram Agarwal

This Advisor explores the real-world implementation of a change management office (CMO) and highlights key phases of execution, success metrics, and the challenges organizations face in establishing a CMO. While a well-structured CMO can drive alignment, efficiency, and adoption, overcoming resistance, resource constraints, and operational silos is essential.

Advisor

Armand Smits

This Advisor introduces the Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact (CNDCP), a key industry initiative supporting the European Green Deal. With a structured governance model and ongoing collaboration with the European Commission, the CNDCP drives the data center industry toward climate neutrality by 2030.

Advisor

Eystein Thanisch, Greg Smith, Michael Papadopoulos

In this Advisor, ADL’s Eystein Thanisch, Greg Smith, and Michael Papadopoulos question whether AI will deliver on its promised productivity gains. While GenAI has surged in prominence, real-world efficiency improvements remain elusive. To maximize AI’s potential, leaders must take a strategic, human-centric approach — analyzing how AI can enhance key roles while preserving the professional skills needed to harness it effectively.

Advisor

Jim Brosseau

This Advisor explores the deep connection between organizational culture, leadership, and power dynamics. It highlights how cultures often develop unintentionally, reinforcing existing leadership behaviors — both good and bad. While many organizations rely on coercive or reward-based power, a shift toward collaborative and participatory leadership fosters adaptability and long-term success.

Advisor

Brian van Laar, Angela Greco, Hilde Remøy, Vincent Gruis, Mohammad Hamida

In this Advisor, we explore how AI is transforming adaptive reuse decision-making. The Reincarnate project integrates AI tools with traditional scenario methods and participatory workshops to develop 15 circular building reuse scenarios. Leveraging ChatGPT-4 for narrative insights and DALL-E for visualizations, these scenarios enhance early design stages, align stakeholder priorities, and support more informed policy and project decisions.

Advisor

Curt Hall

This Advisor explores how leading companies are advancing AI-driven large world models (LWMs) to enhance robotics and AVs. It examines the efforts of start-ups and tech giants, highlighting their innovations in virtual world simulation, AI training, and real-world applications. While LWMs remain an emerging technology, their rapid development is poised to revolutionize AI-powered automation, decision-making, and interaction in complex environments.

Advisor

San Murugesan

In this Advisor, Cutter Expert San Murugesan reflects on the enduring legacy of Steve Jobs, a visionary innovator who transformed technology and redefined industries. As he would have turned 70 this month, we revisit his pioneering spirit, unconventional leadership, and relentless pursuit of excellence.

Advisor

Christina Bidmon, Laura Piscicelli, Iryna Susha

This Advisor highlights the critical need to align the green and digital transitions, emphasizing that while both will reshape society and the economy, they follow distinct trajectories. To ensure a just and effective twin transition, industry and policymakers must address key challenges, including data fragmentation, overreliance on technology, power imbalances, and policy alignment.

Article

Shannon Ames, Whitney Stovall

Shannon Ames and Whitney D. Stovall demonstrate how a whole-system approach can transform hydropower by expanding project evaluations beyond reliability and longevity to embrace multiple priorities that deliver additional value. The authors illustrate how, when designed effectively, hydropower can fulfill its renewable energy mandate while also supporting 24/7 demand matching, biodiversity protection and restoration, and positive community impact.

Article

Matt Mayberry, Scott Tew, Laura Asiala

Matt Mayberry, Scott Tew, and Laura Asiala contend that a lack of strategic alignment between leadership and management is the root cause of failure in sustainability transformations — when sustainability is treated as an add-on, it remains separate from core business operations. Using Trane Technologies as an example (and pulling from the experience of coauthor Scott Tew, Trane’s chief sustainability officer), the article highlights a common pitfall: once executives roll out a strategy, leaders expect strategy execution to propagate naturally across the enterprise, but without structured alignment, implementation falters. This gap often leaves ambitious sustainability goals unheard or unheeded across the enterprise because of the distance — both actual and metaphorical — between the corporate boardroom and operations.

Article

Paul Godfrey, Vishal Gajjar

Paul C. Godfrey and Vishal Gajjar explore how a newly appointed chief sustainability officer (CSO) can navigate complex sustainability challenges to deliver co-benefits, satisfy multiple stakeholders, and optimize resources. This can be achieved through the Sustainability Canvas, a strategic framework that acts as a compass. The authors take us inside the world of a new CSO facing seemingly disparate issues — low maturity in sustainability reporting, water scarcity in operations, toxic chemicals in products, and a shallow community program that prioritizes philanthropy over genuine engagement. As the CSO plots sustainability approaches to address these issues, the Sustainability Canvas tool offers a structured approach for balancing compliance, costs, reputation, and customer expectations, viewing each challenge through both risk and opportunity lenses while addressing ROI concerns.

Article

Ali Ayach, Farhan Mirza

Ali Alessandro Ayach and Farhan Mirza of Arthur D. Little (ADL) explore integrated sustainability approaches to healthcare. The industry is significant in terms of economic and environmental impact, accounting for 10% of global GDP and 4.4% of net emissions — ironically contributing to the very health issues it seeks to prevent and cure. According to authors, the sector is pursuing sustainability both in response to regulatory pressure and as a moral imperative. The benefits — financial, reputational, and health-related — are clear, but so are the challenges, given healthcare’s complexity and heavy regulations. In this sector, sustainability can only be embraced if quality of care is not compromised.

Article

Kelly Cooper, Neil Hawkins

Kelly T. Cooper and Neil C. Hawkins warn that “large corporations tend to overlook the fact that successful integration of sustainable business models consistently results in product innovation, new market entry, and commercial longevity.” They elevate the concept of purpose by combining the “what” and “why” of vision, mission, and strategy with the “how” of implementation to create a Constancy of Purpose. The article internalizes a whole-of-business approach to sustainability, which recognizes that ups and downs, headwinds and tailwinds, and expansions and contractions are normal to any business cycle.

Article

Margaret O'Gorman, Frank Werner

This issue of Amplify, Part I of a two-part series, shines a light on the challenges and opportunities of unifying sustainability efforts and showcases pragmatic approaches for greater impact. It shows how a whole-of-business approach to corporate sustainability can unlock the private sector’s power to advance sustainability in tandem with the environment.