There is continuing interest in how cultured meat shapes future food technologies that favor sustainability domains (e.g., the natural environment). However, we need to learn more about how cultured meat (organizations) embrace truly sustainable businesses required to address grand challenges associated with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Whereas true business sustainability involves strategies that responsibly and synergically connect a firm’s progress to society and the planet, business-as-usual prioritizes the micro-level of corporate profitability to the detriment of the social and ecological macro-level issues. Therefore, I argue that there is a need to strengthen the analysis of the interplay between cultured meat and business sustainability to understand their connections with the SDGs. This research’s central inquiry is how business sustainability informs cultured meat in addressing the SDGs. I conducted case studies of four protein production companies to search for answers to the main research question. Two are multinationals focused on animal-based protein. The other two are new startups producing cultured meat. I drew on the Natural-Resource-Based View of the Firm (NRBV) to create conceptual maps of business sustainability strategies that connect the firms’ practices and processes to the SDGs. Results and analyses informed what and how business sustainability’s strategic capabilities can favor progress in multiple SDGs. This research contributes a methodology to build firms’ business sustainability strategic mapping, which favors clustering the firms’ practices into sustainability strategies and SDG categories. Empirically, it evaluates previous theoretical propositions about the interactions of cultured meat and the SDGs.
