The beginning of a new academic year always brings a particular kind of energy. It is a moment to look back at what we have built, but above all, to ask what the world is now asking of us.
Our recntly published 2025/2026 Activity Report captures a year of significant growth and transformation for the Center for Responsible Business & Leadership. Across research, education, and collaboration with companies and institutions, we continued to pursue the purpose that has guided us from the beginning: enabling businesses to create meaningful and lasting value for society.
Looking back, I am particularly proud not simply of how much we did, but of how our work has evolved to better serve our stakeholders.
We continued to bring real business challenges into the classroom, by engaging hundreds of students in real business challenges in collaboration with many of our partner companies. With this approach, the SDGs as Business Strategy course was recognised with the Universidade Católica Portuguesa Pedagogical Innovation Award 2025 - a recognition of an approach that treats sustainability as a strategic business question.
We strengthened executive education, translating rigorous knowledge into tools that can actually support better decisions. The Observatory of the SDGs in Portuguese Companies completed another major cycle of work, collecting data from 177 companies, and aiming to reinforce the business case for sustainability in times where the OECD’s Responsible Business Outlook 2026 points to a persistent global gap between corporate commitments and their actual implementation. Many other relevant projects allowed us to put research at the service of companies and leaders, in areas like the blue economy, textiles, impact accounting, etc.
And this is perhaps where the next chapter begins.
What stands out most to me is how much the sustainability conversation itself is extraordinarily changing. In a world marked by geopolitical instability, technological disruption, growing pressure on competitiveness and profound social change, sustainability is becoming a subtle, but crucial factor beneath all these important discussions. It is increasingly part of the foundations on which resilient and future-ready organisations are built, as part of the strategic equation.
Companies will increasingly have to decide for themselves where sustainability creates resilience, innovation, competitiveness and long-term value, rather than allowing regulation to make those choices for them.
The same applies to the Sustainable Development Goals. As 2030 approaches, the question is no longer simply whether companies support the SDGs. It is whether the global sustainability architecture designed a decade ago remains sufficient and suitable for the world we are entering.
This is why during the past year we deliberately began to broaden our conversation through initiatives such as What Comes After 2030? and Lisbon Sustainability Week, exploring not only how to implement the current agenda, but how business, academia and policymakers should think about what comes next. To address this important discussion, we are working on a world-class documentary in collaboration with the Director, Wim Wermeulen.
This year we want to go deeper into the questions that increasingly matter to leaders: What does responsible leadership mean in an age of AI and geopolitical fragmentation? How can companies enjoy from the business case for sustainability? Should corporate purpose genuinely influence decisions? How do we move from measuring impact to managing it? And, perhaps most importantly, what should the role of business be in shaping the global sustainable development agenda beyond 2030?
Our Center was created precisely to work at this intersection between research, business practice and societal transformation. Our ambition remains to bring rigorous academic knowledge into business practice and to help sustainability move from the margins of corporate decision-making to the core of strategy.
As we begin this new academic year, I therefore feel less that we are simply starting another cycle of activities and more that we are entering a new phase, where questions are becoming harder, but our mission is reinforced.
Have a great and impactful week, and a very inspiring working year ahead!
Filipa Pires de Almeida, Executive Director – Center for Responsible Business and Leadership