Sustainable Value Creation – A Core Topic for Board Members

6 Feb 2026 Event

Sustainability has moved in and out of boardroom priorities—first driven by climate urgency and ESG regulations, more recently dismissed by some as “woke.” In a recent workshop by IDN NL, we made the case that sustainability can, in fact, become a powerful driver of long-term value creation.

Realizing this value requires supervisory boards to understand the specific risks and opportunities of their business and to clarify how sustainability can be translated into customer value and competitive advantage.

Hans Reus, Managing Director at Russell Reynolds Associates, generously hosted the event and shared his perspective on sustainable governance. Jenny Wassenaar shared her perspectives both as a Chief Sustainability Officer and supervisory board member, drawing on her experience at both levels in developing sustainability as a source of value. Marieke van Winkelen and Wouter Jongepier shared their sustainability and governance expertise, and acted as facilitators.

Participants worked on concrete cases in 4 sectors: consumer goods, oil& gas, banking and education. To make this an enjoyable and competitive exercise, we played a game based on “What’s the risk” by #IFRS (link below). We shared lessons learned and discussed how these insights can be applied in our own supervisory roles.

Key take-aways

  • It is relatively easy to identify the key Risks & Opportunities for an organization, but far more challenging to agree on a limited number of actions to strategically address these topics, given budgetary and organizational constraints.
  • Participants noted the tension between short-term and long-term actions and the difficulty of getting timing right (not getting too far ahead of customers and competitors, but also not falling behind).
  • All agreed that sustainable value creation requires not only developing a balanced long-term strategy, but also sticking with it. Don’t change course when facing setbacks!

Thanks to Jenny and Hans for bringing this topic to life for the audience with expertise, a fun game and a perfect venue!

https://www.ifrs.org/sustainability/knowledge-hub/workshop-resources/climate-risk-card-game/

On LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/insead-directors-network-netherlands_ifrs-inboard-activity-7426728918927187968-lg0Y?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAAE6X4BgMwSLYz1igwBzHfI81YQqn-dAmc