Sustainability Opportunity Discovery: Definition, Scope and Method Requirements

Sustainability reporting frameworks require companies to disclose both the Risks and the Opportunities arising from sustainability matters. The disciplines, tools and professional roles supporting the Risk side are mature and well populated. The Opportunity side has no equivalent: no agreed name, no stated method requirements, and no body of practice that can be taught, audited or improved.

This paper proposes a name and a definition for that missing discipline: Sustainability Opportunity Discovery. It sets out what a Sustainability Opportunity is, what discovery means as distinct from assessment, where the boundaries of the category lie against adjacent practice, and what functional requirements any method must meet to count as a discovery method. It then summarises the disclosure evidence that motivates the category, and states plainly what that evidence can and cannot support.
The definition is offered for use, criticism and revision by anyone working in this area, including competitors of the author’s firm. A category that only one organisation can practise is not a category.