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Book

Clean Winners

Sustainability Strategy That Puts Customers First

Overview

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Overview

Authors

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“Clean Winners demonstrates how many companies have lost their way by isolating sustainability goals from business value. When combined with customer needs and innovation, sustainability becomes a powerful differentiator.”

Florent Menegaux CEO, Michelin Group

“Clean Winners offers a customer-oriented perspective that aligns with the future of business: one where value creation and sustainability are mutually reinforcing. A must-read for executives seeking to leverage sustainability to increase customer value.”

Guilherme Loureiro Regional CEO, Walmart Canada, Chile, Mexico, and Central America; coauthor, Reinventing the Leader

“Goutam Challagalla and Frédéric Dalsace make sustainability resonate—turning it into something every customer wants and making it the heart of business operations and strategy so both customers and the planet win.”

Jørgen Vig Knudstorp Former Chairman and CEO, the Lego Group; member of the board, Nike and Starbucks

“Clean Winners offers readers a new path on how to win in sustainability’s next phase. Goutam Challagalla and Frédéric Dalsace provide groundbreaking insights into how to turn sustainability into a tool they can use to innovate for better products and services, creating true value for consumers.”

Hiroshi Igarashi President and Global CEO, Dentsu

“Clean Winners proves that, when done right, sustainability drives innovation, efficiency, growth, and profit. A powerful way to reframe our thinking and engage businesses on a new path to value creation while still delivering on sustainability challenges.”

Loïc Moutault Global President, Mars Petcare

“Goutam Challagalla and Frédéric Dalsace offer an insightful rethink of sustainability in business. They challenge conventional wisdom and present actionable strategies to drive customer value, product innovation, and business growth.”

Adolfo Orive President and CEO, Tetra Pak

After years of environmentally friendly products taking over shelves, stakeholders demanding sustainability initiatives, and massive investment, the uncomfortable truth is many businesses still aren’t seeing a payoff – financially or in real environmental and social impact. So, what has gone wrong and how can businesses solve the problem?

Professors Goutam Challagalla and Frédéric Dalsace argue that companies have misunderstood what drives purchase decisions – sustainability alone isn’t enough. Executives need to switch the narrative – stop asking how to make a product more sustainable and start asking how to use sustainability to generate customer value and robust profits.

Using real-world examples of ‘Clean Winners’ –like Nespresso, John Deere, Schneider Electric and Michelin – the book explores which brands are leading the way, and a new way of thinking which puts customers first. It outlines Sustainability 2.0 – offering practical frameworks, tools and tactics to help business leaders reimagine their sustainability strategies.

The book will be published on 24 March, 2026.

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Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

ISBN

9798892791663

Goutam Challagalla

Dentsu Group Professor of Strategy and Marketing

Frédéric Dalsace

Professor of Marketing and Strategy

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Book

Clean winners: Sustainability strategy that puts customers first

Despite massive investments, sustainable business still isn't very profitable for most companies. Here's a fresh approach for resetting sustainability for customer value—and profitability. Store aisles packed with products labelled "environmentall...

Sustainability Strategy

By Goutam Challagalla and Frédéric Dalsace

Podcast

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Case Study

Flywheel Portfolio Framework: A strategic method for managing core business dynamics

Strategy Organizational Learning Decision Making Leadership

By Michael D. Watkins

Case Study

Flywheel Portfolio Framework: A strategic method for managing core business dynamics

Strategy Organizational Learning Decision Making Leadership

By Michael D. Watkins

Clean winners: Sustainability strategy that puts customers first

By Goutam Challagalla and Frédéric Dalsace
Published by Harvard Business Review Press ©2026

Summary

Available Languages English

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Sustainability

Strategy

Browse all topics

Endress+Hauser: How to future-proof a 70-year-old market leader

By Goutam Challagalla
in I by IMD

Summary

Family ownership, strategic paranoia, and integrated sustainability: Matthias Altendorf on future-proofing global market leader Endress+Hauser.

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Corporate Governance

Leadership

Sustainability

Browse all topics

China innovation system strategy - Speed and scale

By Mark J. Greeven
in I by IMD

Summary

How China’s innovation system strategy is built for speed and scale, the trade-offs it makes, and what executives must know beyond US-China tech rivalry.

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Innovation

Strategy

Technology Management

Browse all topics

Flywheel Portfolio Framework: A strategic method for managing core business dynamics

By Michael D. Watkins
Case reference: IMD-2743 ©2026

Summary

This technical note presents the Flywheel Portfolio Framework, a systematic approach for diagnosing and managing the reinforcing cycles that drive organizational performance. Building on Jim Collins's flywheel concept from Good to Great, the framework extends beyond single-flywheel models to address the reality that businesses operate through multiple simultaneous reinforcing cycles – some that create value, some that destroy it and some that remain dormant. The note introduces three flywheel types: positive flywheels that build competitive advantage through compounding momentum, negative flywheels that accelerate organizational decline and latent flywheels that represent untapped strategic opportunities. Using a fashion retailer as an illustrative example throughout, the note demonstrates how these cycles interact and compete, with organizational trajectory determined by their net effect rather than individual flywheel strength. The framework provides a four-stage methodology and presents five strategic principles to guide execution. Designed for strategic leaders and executives, it equips practitioners with the tools to identify high-leverage intervention points, execute counterintuitive moves when system structure demands them and manage flywheel portfolios to generate sustainable competitive advantage.

Reference IMD-2743

Available Languages English

Contact

Research Information & Knowledge Hub for additional information on IMD publications

Related topics

Strategy

Organizational Learning

Decision Making

Leadership

Browse all topics

Flywheel Portfolio Framework: A strategic method for managing core business dynamics

By Michael D. Watkins
Case reference: IMD-2743 ©2026