The Sustainability Imperative
As organizations struggle to define a strategy that balances purpose and profit, opportunities are increasingly emerging to take the lead in sustainability initiatives. Front-line advances in areas such as net-zero emissions, AI-powered solutions for the underserved, precision agriculture, digital healthcare, and more are delivering business benefits, while simultaneously contributing to the realization of the UN’s 17 SDGs. We provide the expert thinking, debate, and guidance to help your organization reposition and transform in the era of sustainability.
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For Earth Day 2022, let’s examine the climate and environmental risks and challenges facing us and how we can help address them and regain the glory of the Earth and the environment on which we largely depend. While there are amazing ongoing efforts, much more needs to be done by each one of us, including businesses, governments, and regulatory agencies.
By equating sustainability with the reduction of the negative externalities of our industrial processes, ultimately we are assigning environmental responsibility based on a company’s processes. This is meaningful if you are working in the making, moving, or mining of things, but less so if you operate outside of those industries. Thus, we need a new sustainability target that does not limit our collective responsibility to the boundaries of our organizations, as carbon footprinting does, but considers the boundaries of employee consumption.
As we explore in this Advisor, the global sustainability landscape is constantly evolving, with some governments and multinational companies leading the way to generate real business advantage. On the other hand, there is evidence that poor sustainability performance is becoming very costly, and proposed regulations will potentially make it more so.
CIOs and CTOs must steer their organizations toward the right technology portfolio to effectively realize sustainable business models while generating value for stakeholders. Their role in continuously assessing, designing, and implementing sustainable business models by engaging effectively in a sustainable business model canvas can ensure a future-fit business, which will take organizations closer to a zero or negative impact on socio-ecological systems.
Current interest around sustainability and net-zero initiatives mostly focuses on efforts to reduce carbon emissions associated with various products and services. But, as we explore in this Advisor, methane is another emission that wreaks havoc on the environment and deserves our attention.
Drones will have a future positive impact on advanced air mobility, particularly in the area of package delivery. As we explore in this Advisor, drones can be used in this manner to enable sustainability while at the same time leaving a relatively small footprint.
This on demand webinar explores a new definition of environmental responsibility that goes beyond the production footprint and is based on the consumption patterns companies enable, because eventually end consumption drives the economy.
Digital twins provide an advanced form of simulation and modeling for building virtual digital versions of real-world entities and processes. How are organizations using digital twins to implement sustainability projects? This Advisor considers the use of digital twins in sustainability scenarios — including some real-world applications involving smart cities, smart buildings, and clean energy production.