The Weekly Edge: Is your business sustainable enough for 2026?

January 19, 2026

Welcome back to The Weekly Edge. This week, we are looking at how sustainability is becoming a non-negotiable growth lever, the rise of the "Project Economy", and a simple framework to organise your monthly growth focus.

Trending This Week

1. Sustainability as a Strategic Imperative ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) is no longer just a box-ticking exercise or a "nice-to-have". In 2026, it is a primary driver of growth. Recent reports from Forbes and Harvard Business Review highlight that businesses integrating sustainability into their core models are seeing stronger brand loyalty and unlocking new market opportunities. It is shifting from compliance to a competitive advantage.

2. The Era of the "Project-Driven" Organisation Continuous change is the new normal. To adapt, companies are increasingly viewing "projects" as the main mechanism for business evolution and strategy execution. Rather than static departments, agile project teams are becoming the standard unit of work, allowing for faster innovation and responsiveness to market shifts.

3. Hyper-Personalisation via AI The expectation for tailored experiences has reached new heights. Businesses leveraging advanced analytics and Generative AI are delivering personalisation at scale. This goes beyond just "Hi [Name]" in an email; it is about predicting customer needs and offering highly relevant products and services in real-time.

Tool of the Week: Perplexity Enterprise

If your team spends hours digging for market intelligence, Perplexity Enterprise is the game-changer you need this year.

It redefines research by combining a powerful real-time answer engine with your internal data. Instead of scrolling through endless search results, you get verified, cited answers immediately.

• Why we love it: It cuts down research time significantly, allowing strategy teams to track competitor movements and validate market shifts instantly.
• Best for: Market research, competitive analysis, and internal knowledge management.

Quick Tip / Growth Hack: The GRGR Framework

Feeling overwhelmed by where to focus your growth efforts? Try the GRGR Framework to structure your monthly or quarterly goals. Focus on just one of these four levers at a time:

1. Gain: Strategies to acquire new clients (e.g., cold outreach, paid ads).
2. Retain: Tactics to keep existing customers happy (e.g., onboarding improvements, success check-ins).
3. Grow: Methods to increase revenue from current clients (e.g., upsells, cross-sells).
4. Reactivate: Campaigns to win back lost or dormant clients.

Action: Pick one letter for February and dedicate your growth experiments solely to that metric.

Case Study Spotlight: Liquid Death

The Hook: How can you scale a commodity product like water in a saturated market? By building a media company that happens to sell water.

The Strategy: Liquid Death did not compete on "better water". They competed on entertainment. Their "murder your thirst" tagline, heavy metal aesthetic, and commitment to killing plastic pollution turned a boring purchase into a lifestyle statement.

The Result: They achieved valuation in the hundreds of millions (and eventually billions) not by out-spending Coke or Pepsi on distribution initially, but by out-manoeuvring them on attention.

Key Takeaway: If your product is boring, your brand does not have to be. Lean into a distinct voice and stand for something (like sustainability) to cut through the noise.