Sustainability advisory grounded in the scholarship of sustainability
CIKI is the only advisory practice in the world grounded in the scholarship of sustainability, offering a first-principles intellectual framework developed through original doctoral and post-doctoral research.
Contents of this page
What makes CIKI different
Who this is for
Consulting and advisory services
Why ESG needs deeper thinking
The policy problem CIKI addresses
How an engagement works
1. What makes CIKI different
Most sustainability consultancies offer services of a similar nature: helping organizations comply with compliance audits, align organizational activities with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and prepare a sustainability report. That service has value — but it does not address the intellectual root of the sustainability challenge faced by an organization.
CIKI does something different. Using the scholarship of sustainability — which is the world's first integrated intellectual framework for understanding, analyzing, and resolving the problems of unsustainability — CIKI aims to assist organizations build genuine strategic capability: not just compliant or reported, but actual advancement toward sustainability as a lived organizational reality.
Every CIKI engagement delivers a product that your organization keeps: an integrated understanding of your sustainability challenge that no checklist, reporting standard, or generic framework audit could impart.
2. Who this is for
Corporations & Businesses
Corporations and businesses have sustainability commitments to investors, regulators, and the public. However, these sustainability commitments do not automatically impart intellectual coherence. Organizations’ ESG reports describe activities without demonstrating how they are embedded in a coherent understanding. CIKI helps creating the integrated strategic foundation that organizations in their current practice are largely missing.
Government agencies
Sustainability policies — whether it pertains to climate, water, energy, or urbanization — predominantly get designed in silos without much collaboration taking place between teams. CIKI’s integrated intellectual framework, when applied to the policy landscape, could help identify systemic opportunities that are not perceivable in siloed policy-making.
Educational & research institutions
Institutions administer sustainability teaching and research within rigorous disciplinary frameworks without much control over the cross-disciplinary intellectual framework that genuine sustainability thinking necessitates. CIKI can help design that framework through research partnerships, curriculum review, and advisory engagements.
3. Consulting and advisory services
CIKI's consulting engagements are customized to the specific sustainability challenge, sector context, and organizational capacity of each client. The following are the core service types offered by CIKI.
1. Sustainability strategy development
It represents the most comprehensive engagement offered by CIKI. Spanning over 6-12 weeks, CIKI would work with your leadership team to construct an integrated sustainability strategy, grounded in the scholarship of sustainability. The deliverable is a strategy document that articulates your organization's sustainability position, identifies pathways to advance it, and maps a priority-tiered implementation roadmap, intellectually defensible to both investors and the public.
This service is suitable for corporations, government agencies, universities, and large NGOs undertaking a genuine sustainability transformation.
2. Sustainability audit and gap analysis
A structured assessment of your organization's current sustainability positioning based on an analysis of your existing strategies, policies, reporting, and practices in the light of the theory of integrated knowledge creation. The deliverable is a written gap analysis report, identifying gaps not just in what you are doing but in how you are thinking about sustainability. It would also produce priority-tiered recommendations for addressing the identified gaps.
This consulting engagement is suitable for organizations preparing for a sustainability strategy review, whether it be in response to investor scrutiny or in preparation of a regulatory compliance audit.
3. Integrated intellectual assessment
The integrated intellectual assessment — which is CIKI's proprietary consulting product — applies the theory of integrated knowledge creation to a specific sustainability issue relevant to your organization. The output is an ‘integrated knowledge document’, presenting a rigorous, multi-dimensional analysis of the issue that reveals the full complexity, key knowledge gaps, and action priorities that single-discipline analyses cannot produce.
This engagement is suitable for organizations facing a complex, high-stakes sustainability challenge that existing frameworks have not resolved.
4. Advisory retainer
This is for organizations seeking ongoing strategic sustainability guidance. It would establish a dedicated advisory relationship — with a monthly to quarterly frequency — giving your leadership team direct access to Dr. Hossain's expertise as your sustainability challenges evolve. This service includes written advice, document review, strategic input into board and executive discussions, and attendance at key internal planning sessions.
4. Why ESG needs deeper thinking
ESG has become the dominant language of corporate sustainability. And it is so for a good reason. Investors, regulators, and stakeholders are increasingly demanding that organizations demonstrate their sustainability performance in standardized, comparable terms. The growth of ESG reporting frameworks and mandatory disclosure requirements, thus, reflect genuine progress.
However, ESG reporting is not the same as ESG strategy, as ESG strategy is also not the same as genuine organizational sustainability. Today, many organizations produce sophisticated ESG reports and immature sustainability strategies. They know what to report, but not what to do differently. They have the map, but it does not necessarily mean having the compass.
CIKI's integrated intellectual framework provides the compass. It is the intellectual foundation that makes ESG strategy coherent from the inside out, where it does not get assembled from reporting requirements, but get constructed from an integrated understanding of what an organization's sustainability challenges actually are, how they interact, and what genuine progress toward resolving them would look like. The result is an ESG strategy that satisfies regulators because it is genuine, not despite being so.
5. The policy problem CIKI addresses
The history of government sustainability policy is, in large part, a history of good intentions producing incomplete results. It is not a failure of effort or investment but of integrated thinking. Policy teams working within their domains strive to apply the best knowledge that their disciplines offer. However, such disciplinary knowledge is insufficient for the integrated challenges that sustainability policies must address. As a result, policies solve parts of the problems they address, while inadvertently deepening crises in relation to other areas.
CIKI's integrated intellectual framework could provide government agencies with the necessary intellectual infrastructure to design policies that account for a comprehensive coverage of sustainability interactions, thus, producing better outcomes, reducing unintended consequences, and building the cross-sector coherence that effective sustainability governance requires.
6. How an engagement works
Every CIKI consulting engagement follows a structured, transparent process, comprised of the following steps:
Step 1 — Discovery call (Free, 30 minutes)
A no-obligation conversation with Dr. Hossain to discuss your organization's sustainability challenge, context, and goals. The conversation would conclude with Dr. Hossain outlining whether an engagement would be the right fit, and what type of service could best address your needs.
Step 2 — Scoping & Proposal (1–2 weeks)
CIKI would then prepare a written proposal specifying the engagement type, scope, deliverables, timeline, and fees.
Step 3 — Engagement commencement
Following proposal acceptance and agreement, CIKI would commence work and maintain regular communication, including fortnightly updates and a mid-engagement review.
Step 4 — Deliverable & Presentation
The agreed deliverable is produced and presented to your leadership team. In this session, Dr. Hossain would also discuss findings, answer questions, and clarify implementation priorities.
Step 5 — Ongoing support (Optional)
For organizations seeking continued support following the completion of a project, CIKI can offer follow-up sessions, advisory retainer arrangements, and continued training services.