23367: No Time to Waste: AI-Driven Dynamic Capabilities for Sustainability (session 26160)

As environmental challenges intensify, companies face increasing pressure to improve their environmental footprint, necessitating innovative and entrepreneurial approaches to sustainability. In this context, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a technology with transformative poten-tial, enabling sustainable business. However, the mechanisms through which firms develop AI-driven capabilities to address these challenges remain underexplored. To bridge this gap and un-cover the “how” of creating AI-driven business value for sustainability, this study analyses an extensive sample of semi-structured interviews with CEOs, business unit heads and sustainability as well as AI managers. This discovery-driven study presents an integrative framework that illus-trates how the iterative process of AI-driven sensing, seizing, and sustaining capabilities empower firms to tackle sustainability challenges. Entrepreneurial orientation is central to this process, serv-ing as a critical driver of agility, proactiveness, and risk-taking behaviours essential for activating dynamic capabilities for sustainability. Specifically, the framework highlights how AI enables firms to optimize resource utilization and drive systemic innovation through an entrepreneurial lens. By uncovering the microfoundations of AI-driven sustainability practices, this study offers actionable insights into aligning entrepreneurial strategies with sustainability objectives utilizing AI as a catalyst for transformative and environmentally sustainable innovation.

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