Real Change was officially launched on 9 May 2008 at the Leadership Challenge in Stockholm with His Majesty King Carl XVI Gustaf, King of Sweden, and the Director Generals from the five Swedish agencies supporting the programme. Real Change will support the world’s decision makers in business, communities and governments as they implement sustainability solutions - ensuring that their decision making will be based on scientific foundations and will result in real change towards sustainability.

“This unique methodology is now uniting scientists, business enterprises and politicians in a systematic pursuit of sustainability,” Karl‐Henrik Robèrt, Chairman of the Real Change Steering Group.

Although Real Change was launched in 2008, the programme has been in works for many years. Founding organizations; The Natural Step, Blekinge Technical Institute and Lund University have long been committed to systems approaches to problem solving using a rigorous definition of sustainability to structure their thinking.