Our research explores more holistic ways of understanding and creating sustainable enterprises. Enterprises and business school scholars are two primary actors in this research endeavor. Enterprises are moving towards sustainability but with a partial and selective understanding of global sustainability. Business school scholars generally study sustainability in their respective functional areas, such as management, accounting, finance and marketing, with some notable exceptions. We suggest that transdisciplinarity offers a unique real-world problem-solving framework that crosses disciplinary boundaries and the academic–practitioner divide. We explore the nature of transdisciplinarity and its application to corporate sustainability. We argue that enterprise sustainability requires trans-functional, trans-disciplinary, trans-stakeholder, trans-aesthetic and trans-human knowledge that is possible through transdisciplinarity. We provide an example of transdisciplinary work in art and sustainable enterprise. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment