The 9R carousel
of progress
A practical operating framework for making sustainability competitive
The Carousel exists because the context has changed: volatility is no longer an occasional shock, it’s the operating climate—pricing itself into supply, insurance, talent, regulation and trust. In that world, sustainability can’t survive as reporting theatre or an “annex” run by one team; it has to become how the organisation competes, allocates resources, manages risk, designs offers, and earns legitimacy. The goal is simple and tough: build an approach that a CFO can underwrite, that communities and regulators can trust, and that doesn’t treat nature as an externality.
In Competitive Sustainability, the inspiration is deliberately part “roads” and part “dazzle”: the world’s fairs and Disney remind us that stories set speed, but stories without choreography wither. So the Carousel is designed as a ride you can actually run—nine “translation logics” that connect board language to biophysical reality and turn ambition into a coordinated operating cadence: imagine boldly, make it shippable, break it safely, then rotate to the next pod. It also forces the question that sits underneath all strategy: what is your model of competition? Because once that’s explicit, sustainability stops being an add-on and becomes architecture.
Learn more about the 9R Carousel of Progress in our new book , ‘Competitive Sustainability’, it explores how sustainability can be utilized to gain a competitive advantage and work in tandem with the key drivers of a successful business. It acknowledges the failure of the sustainability community to drive real corporate change and lays out a new and necessary path for successful business, one that both sustainability and business leaders can share.
RELEVANCE
Define what truly matters by anchoring the offer in real human needs, not just wants—and reducing the waste created by solving the wrong problem well. Relevance is where “shared doorways” begin: when you solve the right job, loyalty rises and footprint falls.
RESOURCES
Treat inputs as strategic, not merely cheap—because scarcity, volatility and disruption are now competitive variables. This pod focuses on securing lower-impact, lower-fragility supply so margin and continuity aren’t hostage to shocks.
RESILIENCe
Build the capacity to keep promises when the world moves: fewer outages, faster recovery, steadier cash flows. Resilience is the operational proof that sustainability isn’t virtue—it’s uptime, reliability and risk discipline.
responsibility
Hard-wire the rules: governance, accountability, and the disciplines that prevent outsourced harm from returning as legal, tender, finance or brand penalties. This pod turns “doing the right thing” into durable operating design—clear owners, clear standards, clear remediation.
reciprocity
Make value chains durable by sharing value: partnerships that improve security, quality, speed and innovation—not extraction that breeds fragility. Reciprocity is where trust becomes a supply advantage competitors can’t quickly copy.
reputation
Treat trust as an asset that compounds slowly and collapses instantly—so proof beats promise. This pod focuses on credibility: claims that survive scrutiny, shorten crises, and lower the cost of growth.
reward
Reward is about ensuring today’s returns won’t be clawed back tomorrow by stranded assets, transition shocks, supply fragility or collapsing legitimacy. It reframes “profit” as graded value—rewarding earnings that are durable, resilient and nature-aligned over gains that depend on hidden harms, temporary loopholes or brittle systems
reduction & regeneration
Go beyond “less bad”: cut absolute impact while restoring the capacities the business depends on. This pod turns efficiency into outcomes—where waste reduction saves money, and regeneration earns permission, resilience and long-term value.
re-invention
Don’t just play better inside broken rules—help reshape the rules so the right thing becomes the easy thing. Re-invention is category and system leadership: standards, platforms and models that redefine what “winning” means.