Beyond the Triple Bottom Line: Eight Steps toward a Sustainable Business Model

The Book

Szekely, F., & Dossa, Z. (2017). Beyond the Triple Bottom Line: Eight Steps toward a Sustainable Business Model. The MIT Press.

The Authors

Francisco Szekely is Professor of Leadership and Sustainability at IMD Business School. He has taught at institutions such as Harvard, MIT, and ESMT Berlin.

Zahir Dossa is an entrepreneur and academic. He founded The Argan Tree and Function of Beauty and currently serves as a professor at the University of Miami Business School.

What the book is about

Szekely and Dossa fundamentally reframe the idea of sustainability. Instead of treating it as an add-on to “normal” business, a constraint, or something that needs to be justified by finding a business case, they place positive social and environmental impact at the very core of the firm’s purpose. Profitability is not dismissed—quite the opposite—but it is clearly repositioned as a means to achieve the organisation’s mission, not as an end in itself.

The authors draw heavily on Freeman’s stakeholder theory and on positive organisational ethics. Their starting point is not products, markets, or competitive positioning, but genuine societal and environmental needs. The business model, in this logic, comes later—it is an overlay designed to address those needs in a viable way.

Authors criticise strongly a reporting approach to sustainability (TBL and GRI rules as their realisation), because it measures only the externalities without considering the real impacts on the stakeholders, especially the second and further order ones.

In response, they propose a framework that helps companies move further along the sustainability journey, explicitly engaging with difficult issues such as scalability (if it is ever needed?) and innovations.

The argument is supported by several well-known case studies: Tesla (before Elon went crazy) versus GM in the early race for electric vehicles, Triodos Bank, Patagonia (inevitably), and Ben & Jerry’s during and after its acquisition by Unilever.

Things that made me think

Sustainability is framed as a journey rather than a state—as something organisations do, not something they are. It is described as a positive deviation from the norm, not compliance with it. Once a certain practice becomes widespread or regulated, it stops being “sustainable” in this stronger sense and becomes business-as-usual.

Think of how climate strategies have evolved. What is now considered a basic necessity was, not that long ago, a bold move by a handful of visionaries. In this framing, leadership in sustainability is less about meeting targets and more about constantly pushing the boundary of what is considered possible and beneficial (for people and planet).

The second issue worth mentioning is the issue of scalability of the sustainable business. Authors do raise questions if it is desired. It might be - to increase the positive impact. But if so, if it is possible? When you scale up, you risk diluting your mission as new stakeholders who do not necessarily understand it the same way you do join. Especially for new investors, priorities might differ (Ben & Jerry case), but you also need to be mindful of new employees.

My view

The logic of the book is powerful, provided one accepts the authors’ core assumption: that all stakeholders (primary, secondary, and silent) should be treated as equally important. Conceptually and ethically, this is an appealing position, and the authors argue for it convincingly.

Practically, however, I struggle with this assumption. Stakeholder interests often conflict, and it is rarely possible to satisfy all of them simultaneously. In real decision-making, some form of prioritisation is unavoidable. The reason shareholder primacy often wins is that it offers a clear, measurable, and widely understood criterion of value. Disadvantages of shareholder capitalism are apparent, especially in the XXI century, but replacing it with a fully egalitarian stakeholder model raises complex and largely unresolved questions about trade-offs, decision rights, and accountability—even if, normatively, I might wish such a model could work.