The Business & Sustainability Programme
An immersive four-day residential programme for senior leaders navigating market transformation and accelerating change.
Businesses are operating in an environment of unprecedented disruption. Technological advances, geopolitical shifts, resource constraints, evolving customer expectations and changing regulatory landscapes are reshaping industries and redefining sources of competitive advantage.
In this context, traditional approaches to strategy and leadership are no longer sufficient.
Leadership in this era requires building organisational resilience to withstand disruption, while also shaping the conditions and deploying innovations required to strengthen competitive position and long-term market viability.
The Cambridge Business Transformation Programme helps senior business executives build the insight and capabilities needed to lead through disruption. Combining Cambridge and industry insight, innovation and a trusted peer network, it gives leaders the space to assess, set direction and develop the strategies to shape their organisations and the future markets they will depend on.
4,000 alumni from more than 1,750 organisations in 100 countries.
Combining Cambridge research, industry insights and exposure to frontier innovation, the programme explores the environmental, technological, geopolitical, societal and economic forces reshaping markets. Participants develop the strategic insight needed to reassess priorities, direct investment and lead transformation within their organisations and across the wider systems in which they operate.
Since 1994, the BSP has evolved and grown into a global series run in key locations around the world, becoming a benchmark for sustainability leadership education. More than 4,000 alumni now form a powerful international network driving business transformation and systemic change.
Choose your global seminar
Each seminar of the Business & Sustainability Programme is structured around the same foundational topics of sustainability leadership; however, sustainability challenges and opportunities vary widely by region.
Our differentiated seminars allow the BSP to address both the global issues as well as the relevant regional contexts and complexities that challenge the day-to-day lives of our delegates.
Cambridge, UK
The Cambridge seminar of the Business & Sustainability Programme was where this flagship executive education programme began in 1994 as The Prince of Wales’ Business and Sustainability Programme.
Africa
Explore how our current economies and societies have come to be the way they are, the systemic risks we and our institutions now face and the role of business in leading viable responses that will take us to a sustainable future.
Melbourne, Australia
Hosted in one of the Asia-Pacific region’s most vibrant innovation hubs, the Melbourne BSP seminar brings together senior leaders navigating complex sustainability challenges in a fast-evolving regional context.
Asia
CISL is partnering with Insignia Ventures Academy, the education arm of Southeast Asia venture capital firm Insignia Ventures Partners, to deliver the Asia seminar.
Benefits of attending
The Programme is designed with a unique learning journey blending the latest academic research with leading industry expertise and tools and frameworks to enable practical application of learnings.
Participants will be equipped to:
- Understand the structural forces reshaping their industry and operating context
- Clarify the most critical strategic risks and opportunities across short-, medium- and long-term horizons
- Apply frameworks for decision-making under uncertainty
- Identify actionable pathways for their organisation to strengthen commercial performance in a carbon and resource-constrained world
- Engage with frontier innovation and explore opportunities for pre-competitive collaboration
- Strengthen organisational resilience and adaptability to thrive in disruption
- Build a trusted network of senior peers for ongoing support and collaboration
Programme participants go on to join the CISL Network of over 40,000 senior leaders and leading practitioners from around the world.
CISL provides access to a treasure trove of information, perspective and inspiration that we critically need. The quality of content and teaching is outstanding
Martin Riant
Group President, Procter & Gamble
Who should attend?
is designed for senior executives and decision-makers within organisations
- C-Suite & Top Management: Founders, Managing Directors, C-suite executives, and Board members.
- Strategic Leaders: Heads of Departments, Business Unit Leaders, Functional and Division Leaders, Strategy and Transformation Leaders, Innovation and Growth Leaders, Senior Investment Professionals, Senior Public Sector and Institutional Leaders
Participants come from a diverse range of organisation and sectors, creating a rich environment for cross-industry learning and peer exchange.
Recent attendees have come from organisations such as ABN AMRO, Anglo American, IKEA, Lloyds Banking Group, Nestlé, P&G, the European Investment Bank, the World Bank and various government departments, all seeking strategic insight and a deeper understanding of global trends.
How the programme is delivered
Through discussion of live strategic challenges, participants examine how to balance short-term commercial performance with long-term resilience and sustainability. They identify new opportunities for growth and competitive advantage, and leave with clearer priorities for investment, innovation and organisational transformation, alongside a trusted community of senior peers committed to shaping the future of business.
Download the programme brochure to get a deeper understanding
The CISL BSP programme is essential as a business leader. It gave me both the knowledge and courage needed to take tough business decisions.
David Howe
CEO, Jordisk Consulting
The Global Steering Committee
The Global Steering Committee brings together a group of senior-level peers from across business, academia, policy and sustainability to share thoughts and discuss trends that are affecting senior decision-makers. The goal of the steering committee is to ensure that the core curriculum of the programme is cutting-edge and globally applicable.
Details of current Global Steering Committee members can be found in the brochure.
Find out more about current leadership challenges and how the BSP supports leaders who refuse to sit back in the face of systemic risks in CISL CEO Lindsay Hooper's recent blog: What's working now: innovation, market-making and the leadership to make it happen or listen to the webinar recording to hear the themes discussed by CISL's Executive Director for Education, Alice Spencer, and Fellow and Global Steering Committee Member, Munish Datta. Watch here.
