IMD-OWP22-PostEvent-Report-V11[8]

→Sustainability

ACTION POINTS

1

SEE BETTER Use digital technologies to bring transparency into your organization and supply chain.

2 3

UNDERSTAND BETTER Use digital technologies to analyze and measure your sustainability performance.

ACT BETTER Use digital technologies to improve and scale your sustainability performance.

JULIA BINDER Professor of Sustainable Innovation and Business Transformation

gas emissions, recycling, or reducing packaging (we refer to this as a planet focus). Can both performance and planet objectives be achieved simultaneously? On the surface, they can appear non-complementary. A focus on the planet may come at the expense of performance due to increased compliance costs, or lower efficiency due to additional processing steps or reduced output. At

the same time, a singular focus on performance often results in negative impacts on the planet. We believe that digital tools and technologies, if used in a smart way, can benefit both organizational performance and the planet. We refer to this combination as digital sustainability.

FOCUS ON PERFORMANCE AND PLANET Digitization has largely been focused on economic benefits such as reduced costs, increased revenues, and enhanced agility, with relatively little attention paid to environmental impacts (we call this a performance focus). Sustainability, by contrast, is focused on benefits to the environment, for example, by lowering greenhouse

RECOMMENDED READING

CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY IN THE DIGITAL ERA By Michael Wade (MIT Sloan Management Review, April 28, 2020)

20

21