CISL works with global businesses to build transition strategies and capabilities that deliver resilience, competitiveness and long-term value in disrupted markets.
Helping businesses compete in the age of disruption
Balancing short-term operational demands whilst competing, and winning, in the long-term is the key challenge facing many businesses today.
We believe business has the opportunity to shape market transformation and benefit from the transition, both now and in the future.
CISL works with major businesses, financial institutions and entrepreneurs to accelerate innovation and build the strategies, capabilities and enabling conditions for rapid transition to economies that deliver for people, nature and climate by providing:
- Transition strategy and capability: We help senior leaders turn transition ambition into strategic advantage. Our work builds the strategy, capability and confidence organisations need to respond decisively to disruption and lead through change.
- Convening: We bring together the organisations and leaders needed to unlock progress where no single actor can succeed alone. By aligning incentives and building practical partnerships, we help shape the markets and systems that enable faster action.
- Innovation scaling: We help scale the innovations that can drive systemic change by connecting promising solutions with capital, demand and routes to deployment. Our work helps overcome the barriers that slow progress and turns innovation into practical impact.
All our work with business is underpinned by leading-edge research, insights and tools that enable us to shape and scale transformative leadership
Our clients include
Why businesses work with us
For over 35 years, we have worked with businesses and finance to address the most important sustainability challenges and create value for future competitiveness.
- Impact: We are an impact-led not-for-profit Institute of the University of Cambridge.
- Thought leadership: We use on leading-edge business and academic research to develop business approaches to driving resilience and value.
- Connectivity: We have unparalleled access to business and policy leaders, innovators and academics.
- Network: We work with our global network of over 40,000 leaders and industry practitioners to build practical and actionable approaches for business to create value and resilience.
- Global influence: We have offices and hubs in the UK, Brussels, South Africa, Singapore and Australia, and deliver programmes globally.
Hear from CISL CEO Lindsay Hooper and Fellow Paul Gilding as they set out a pathway for the private sector to proactively respond to the current volatile geopolitical and market context while continuing sustainability efforts. Watch the video.
“Working with the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership has been transformative for us. Their deep industry expertise and constructive approach has helped us to shift sustainability and social impact from being perceived as an optional add-on to a strategic business value driver. This shift has empowered our executive team to see integration not just as a compliance exercise, but as an opportunity to embed sustainability into the core of how we operate and create long-term value.” VodafoneThree
Examples of our work:
Transition value accelerator
Working with leading manufacturers, we have co-created board-ready investment cases to inform capital allocation and support their organisations' leadership to confidently allocate capital to transition plans that deliver to their long-term strategy.
Commercial value roadmap
Working with a global food manufacturer, we are helping to develop and deliver their 2040 strategy by assessing current business strategies and developing pathways for transition that deliver commercial value and help to reshape resilience in their sector.
Risk, resilience and decision intelligence
Working with a major telecoms provider, we have developed a series of senior-level sessions to integrate fragmented understandings of risk and enable more certain and systemic decision-making and a clearer pathway forward for the organisation.
Innovation scaling
Working with a global brand, we are identifying, piloting and scaling solutions addressing the beauty industry’s most pressing challenges – from low carbon processes and alternative ingredients to water resilience and inclusive business models.
Transformation capability programme
Supporting a global brewer looking to set ambitious 2030 goals, we have delivered an in-depth strategic programme for 60 senior leaders across the organisation at a key point in their decision-making and implementation cycle.
Convening
CISL’s convening group, CLG Europe, last year mobilised over 155 leading businesses and investors, representing €5 trillion in turnover and €65 trillion in assets, to urge the EU to adopt a 90 per cent emissions reduction target by 2040.
Organisational upskilling programme
For several years, CISL has been working with an international bank, supporting its ambition to lead the banking sector in driving impact. Our work spans business model innovation and stakeholder engagement, as well as upskilling emerging leaders through online and face-to-face customised education.
Global innovation ecosystem engagement
Working with a regional development fund in Asia, we developed an immersion programme for early stage start-ups with global potential, providing insight to scale solutions and opportunities for collaboration with investors.
The Cambridge Business Transformation Programme
In June 2026 we relaunched the Cambridge Business Transformation Programme, an immersive four-day residential programme for senior leaders navigating market transformation and accelerating change.
Founded in 1994 by the then HRH Prince of Wales, now King Charles III, as the Business & Sustainability Programme, this evolution builds on the programme's longstanding commitment to developing business leadership in the face of pressing and interconnected societal and environmental challenges. The programme helps senior leaders build the judgement, practical capability and peer relationships needed to navigate disruption and create long-term value in a rapidly changing world.
Transition strategy, capability and innovation scaling
Transition strategy and capabilities for business
From building resilience to maximising competitiveness, these programmes help teams to design practical pathways to succeed.
Global Innovation and Accelerator Programmes
Supporting organisations to develop commercially relevant approaches to innovation strategy and collaboration.
Strategy and Leadership Programmes for Executives
Develop the knowledge and leadership capacity to tackle critical challenges and opportunities confronting business
Online Leadership and Sustainability Courses
Our online courses combine expert insight, high levels of interactivity and a supported learning experience to achieve measurable outcomes.
Convening:
Corporate Leaders Groups
Global network of membership groups providing a cross-sectoral business voice, engaging on policy issues for market development within the UK, EU and Africa.
Centre for Sustainable Finance
Helping financial institutions to play a leading role in building a more sustainable economy, with deep industry collaboration, high-calibre research, and exceptional education programmes.
To find out more:
If you’re working to transform your organisation, sector or market we’d welcome a conversation. Get in touch to explore how we can accelerate impact together.