Patience and focus, the third way of sustainability for businesses

Patience and focus. Is this a categorical imperative or an exhortation in religious sauce? No, simply the synthesis in two words of what may be a possible posture to hold at present on the subject of sustainability in companies and, more specifically, in its integration into their core business. A posture understood as a response to what is happening on the international scenario characterised by the 'peculiar behaviour' of the new American administration and which finds precisely in the renewed regurgitation of environmental denialism one of its most plastic expressions. This is contrasted, or perhaps added to, by the over-regulation coming from the EU which, with the omnibus package referring to reporting activities, is currently generating no small amount of confusion. In other words, a posture that looks in the direction of putting, as they say, 'the church at the centre of the village', i.e. putting the focus back on the environmental and social impacts of companies and their business models, as suggested by the elements that emerged from the 2025 research promoted by iSustainability, a Digital360 Group company, on the subject of 'The third way of sustainability'.

And in this sense patience and focus seem to be the most appropriate words because, in concrete terms, companies seem to have very clear ideas on what to do. In fact, the results of the research show that 93% of them are very clear that sustainability is an issue that concerns the environmental and social impacts of companies and not a topic of corporate aesthetics. More specifically, 83% believe that the business model adopted is the most appropriate means of reducing the intensity of their environmental and social impacts. It is also extremely interesting to note that as many as 67% of companies believe that not integrating sustainability into business will lead to a loss of competitiveness; this figure, more than others, reveals how awareness of the relevance of sustainability in companies' activities has become extremely central to their strategies and that consequently negativist pushes on climate change risk being increasingly sterile or even producing a boomerang effect for those promoting them. Equally relevant is the fact that for 85% of companies, cultural change is a decisive factor in achieving better integration; and it is precisely this awareness of the relevance of sustainability culture, which contrasts plastically with the 'shrimping' approach adopted by the US administration through denialism, that suggests patience, lots of patience, and, in the light of the data, maintaining a strong focus and awareness on the integration of sustainability in business.