Capabilities

In addition to our three research programs, STL specialises in nine cross-cutting capabilities and methods that help enable and accelerate complex sustainability transitions.

Together, these capabilities distinguish STL through emphasis on systemic change rather than incremental optimisation.

Our capabilities

Understanding sustainability transitions

Capabilities that help explain how transitions emerge, evolve and can be governed:

  • Future pathways and systems modelling

    Exploring alternative futures and transition pathways through scenarios, forecasting, simulation, systems mapping and modelling to support long-term strategic decision-making.

  • Environmental and behavioural economics

    Applying insights from environmental and behavioural economics to understand decision-making and design effective policies, incentives and market mechanisms that support sustainability outcomes.

  • Socio-legal and regulatory research

    Understanding how laws, regulation, taxation and governance arrangements are developed, implemented and experienced in practice, and how they shape organisational and societal change.

Enabling sustainability transitions

Capabilities used to design, test and implement interventions:

  • Living labs and experimentation

    Designing, facilitating and evaluating real-world experiments and collaborative innovation processes involving businesses, governments, communities and other stakeholders to test and accelerate new sustainability solutions.

  • Behaviour and systems change

    Understanding and influencing the behaviours, practices, cultures and organisational processes that shape social, environmental and economic outcomes, including how individual actions interact with wider systems.

Accelerating sustainability transitions

Capabilities focused on the actors whose decisions shape change:

  • Private actors - Management, innovation and organisational transformation

    Understanding how organisations develop strategies, innovations, partnerships and operational practices that support sustainability transitions, including organisational change, entrepreneurship, supply chains and the scaling of sustainability solutions.

  • Financial institutions - Applied finance and accounting

    Understanding how financial systems, investment decisions, accounting practices, reporting frameworks and capital allocation can support sustainability transitions and long-term value creation.

  • Consumers - Sustainable marketing and consumption

    Understanding consumer behaviour and marketing strategies that foster sustainable consumption and support broader social change.

  • Governments - Challenge-led public policy

    Designing, analysing and evaluating policies and governance approaches that mobilise innovation and collaboration to address major societal challenges such as climate change, circular economy and biodiversity loss.