Why It’s Holding Organisations Back — and How ISO 31000 Points the Way Forward By Peter Blokland, PhD General Manager BYAZ bv 1. A Comfortable but Dangerous Misconception Over the past months, a familiar phrase has been reappearing in ISO and ESG circles: “risk and opportunity.” It sounds balanced, even sophisticated, as if risk were the dark side of the moon and opportunity the bright one. But this linguistic comfort blanket hides a deep conceptual flaw. The idea that risk and opportunity are two separate things is not just outdated; it’s harmful. It keeps organisations trapped in a 20th-century mindset that treats risk as something negative to be avoided and opportunity as something positive to be chased, instead of recognising that both are manifestations of the same phenomenon: the effect of uncertainty on objectives. That definition, from ISO 31000, changed everything. Or at least, it should have. 2. Why “Risk and Opportunity” Is a False Dichotomy Before ISO 31000 (2009), risk wa