Sustainable business models are all the craze right now. Firms are making many claims that their activities create social and environmental value. The realization has finally sunk in that business has a fundamental role to play in addressing the net-zero challenge and the sustainable development goals. John Browne, who in 1997 was the first CEO of an oil major to break ranks with his industry peers on climate change denial, recently repeated in the Financial Times that ‘business can be a force for change on climate’.

However, looking at these sustainable business models shows that the value firms promise to create can be quite limited. The majority focuses on cleaning up their own act but fails to assess how their business models are making a difference in tackling climate change, biodiversity loss, or global inequality at a societal level. In our latest publication in Business and Society – Dentoni, Pinkse and Lubberink (2021) –, we argue that there is a need for firms to start organizing their business models in such a way that they support the resilience of the socio-ecological systems – and not just improve their own sustainability performance.