To a large extent, sustainable information technology (sustainable IT) is about using IT to reduce companies’, organizations’, and individuals’ environmental impact. So far, in this second part of the book, we have focused on exploring how you can develop a sustainable IT practice to minimize the impact of IT and how we can make data centers, the cloud, applications, data, information and communications (ICT) equipment, and energy management more sustainable.
Technology—“CleanTech” or “SustainTech”—has an incredible opportunity to be an enabler in developing sustainable technology. This chapter will focus on how we can leverage technology to create sustainable solutions and achieve sustainability by IT. In this chapter, we take an outsider’s perspective and look at how IT can help reduce the environmental burden across the organization and in a broader context in our society through applications of use cases and applications. Sustainability by IT is a vast topic that covers a broad spectrum, and it could easily be a book by itself, but hopefully, you will get a glimpse into the art of the possible. Still, we will revisit the critical use cases highlighted in Chapter 2, The Case for Sustainable IT.
The main objectives of this chapter are to introduce you to the different facets of sustainability by IT and how different types of use cases develop different sustainable solutions.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
By the end of this chapter, you will have learned about how IT can unlock different opportunities to develop or leverage different types of sustainable solutions. This chapter will examine two exciting case studies from Hack for Earth Foundation and Decathlon. Hack for Earth is a non-profit organization facilitating global online hackathons, where it aims to create real solutions to the United Nations’ (UN’s) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The second case study is from Decathlon, a French sporting goods retailer taking a product—kids’ bikes—and turning it into a circular business model, a product as a service (PaaS). By the end of the chapter, you should have a wealth of examples to apply sustainable solutions and develop new sustainable circular products and services.
The primary focus of sustainability in IT is to reduce the organization’s environmental impact through sourcing IT products, components, and services that utilize recyclables, restorative, or regeneration design. (Méndez-Villamil 2021)
Sustainability by IT addresses, to a large extent, how IT can help reduce environmental burdens elsewhere in society by using innovation for sustainable business models. (Méndez-Villamil 2021)
In Chapter 2, Rise of Sustainable IT, we outlined 10 key areas: carbon emission reporting, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risk management, sustainable sourcing and manufacturing, environmentally friendly transportation, energy-efficient buildings, energy resource management, hybrid-work, eco-friendly travel, development of e-services, and PaaS, as depicted in the following diagram:
Figure 9.1 – Sustainability by IT: 10 key areas for indirect carbon dioxide (CO2) emission reduction
This section will look closely at 10 key areas that IT can support an internal organization to address. We will also closely examine each key area, required actions, and some key examples. All these actions primarily aim at two main environmental aspects of sustainability: climate change mitigation and climate change adaption.
Roughly 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions come from the Group of Twenty (G20) countries, where the top three—China, the United States (US), and India—amount to 50% of the world’s emissions. (Tiseo 2022) In the US, since 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has mandated companies that emit more than 25,000 metric tons or more of CO2 to report their greenhouse gas emissions. In the United Kingdom (UK), as of April 1, 2019, large companies must disclose their UK annual energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions. Smaller companies only must report on their global energy use. (UK Gov 2013) The UK government also enacted a new directive on January 17, 2022, that went into effect on April 6, 2022, and outlines mandatory climate-related financial disclosures. (UK Gov 2022) The directive provides guidance to publicly quoted companies, large private companies, and limited liability partnerships (LLPs) on how to meet new mandatory climate-related financial disclosure requirements. In the European Union (EU), Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) superseded by the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is coming into full effect in 2024, which requires companies with more than 500 employees to report on environmental metrics and social aspects such as human rights, employee treatment, anti-corruption, bribery, and diversity. The Inflation Reduction Act was passed on Capitol Hill in Washington during the summer of 2022, which is the most impactful climate bill enacted in the US, focusing on lowering energy costs, building a clean energy economy, and reducing harmful pollution. (The White House 2022) One giant leap forward is the attempt to remove 1 gigaton—or 1 billion metric tons—of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 in the US. In terms of climate impact, this legislation is 10 times more impactful than any other single piece of legislation ever passed. Earlier in the year, in March 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) also proposed the Climate Disclosure Rule to require publicly traded corporations to disclose specific financial information about climate change and greenhouse gas emissions in public disclosure reports. (SEC 2022) It gives me great hope to see governing bodies across the globe taking decisive action to curb the climate crisis. As more and more countries are making emission reporting mandatory, companies need to respond by providing this data in an accurate and timely fashion.
Actions required to address carbon-emission reporting are set out here:
Carbon-emission reporting examples are presented here:
As highlighted in Chapter 1, Our Most Significant Challenge Ahead, the World Economic Forum highlights in the 2022 Global Risks Report (Global Risks Report 2022) that climate action failure is the most significant risk that currently faces humanity, followed by “extreme weather” and “biodiversity” loss. Transitioning to net zero is the most potent mitigating factor to alleviate these risks. Managing your physical and transition ESG risks has become critical to ensure a corporation’s prosperity and long-term value creation. Not long ago, the chief sustainability officer (CSO) was a novelty, but the CSO role has recently become a more frequent member of an organization’s executive management team. Ensuring long-term value creation and financial success while managing ESG risk management has become a top priority for many large companies. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are still struggling to bring the two together, which is a big challenge still.
Actions required to address ESG risk management include the following:
ESG risk management examples include the following:
Production and consumption of products are often overlooked in the grand scheme. Roughly 20% of global emissions come from the industry, primarily cement and steel production. As we learned earlier in the book, roughly 80% of the emissions from a computer, tablet, or smartphone come from the manufacturing phase, and any type of electronics follows the same emission pattern. Therefore, it is essential to embed environmental and sustainability practices into all aspects of your business operations, from sourcing sustainable materials to producing and shipping sustainably, reducing the product’s energy consumption, and managing waste and recycling at all stages of the product development life cycle.
A term commonly used in the industry is materials transition, which means enhancing circularity and substituting emission-intensive materials. (Almulla, El-Shahat and Zhou 2022) With global energy prices rising and water resources being scarce, it is essential to constantly improve energy efficiency, reducing water consumption and other scarce resources such as minerals and other materials in all aspects of your business operations. Managing these aspects will make your business operations more sustainable and more resilient and unlock other benefits such as cutting costs, reducing risk, driving revenue, and improving your brand.
Actions required for sustainable sourcing and manufacturing include the following:
Sustainable sourcing and manufacturing examples are presented here:
The need for transport for both personal and commercial purposes will continue to rise, primarily due to economic expansion. Over the past 10 years, personal and commercial transportation use have increased by 14% and 26% respectively. With 14% of carbon emissions from the transportation sector, switching from combustion engines to electric vehicles is critical. According to IEA Net-Zero by 2050 flagship 2021, some key milestones along the way are that by 2030, 60% of global car sales should be electric, and by 2035, no new internal combustion engine (ICE) car sales will be made, and 50% of heavy truck sales should be electric. In June 2022, the EU voted to effectively ban new fossil-fuel vehicles by 2035, with interim steps in 2025 and 2030. Considerable potential exists for increasing the efficiency of existing transportation methods and replacing the need for transportation and travel by remote working. However, it is not just a matter of switching to electric vehicles (EVs) but also aspects such as intelligent transportation systems, traffic management systems, route and fleet optimization, and so on. All of these will have an environmental impact.
Actions required for environmentally friendly transportation include the following:
Environmentally friendly transportation examples include the following:
The building sector across the world generates 38% of global CO2 emissions. To meet the net-zero targets by 2050, emissions from buildings need to fall by 50% by 2030. (Martella 2022) Therefore, it is essential that on our path to net zero, all new buildings need to be zero-carbon-ready. Therefore, we must look for new solutions that offer better control over resources such as energy and water. Reducing the energy consumption in buildings results in reduced energy consumption, and using water more efficiently minimizes the buildings’ environmental impact. Beyond this, we need to assess the material used in the building and the design of the building itself during new construction or retrofitting existing buildings. Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and insulation are two factors to be considered that significantly improve the efficiency of the building.
Actions required for energy-efficient buildings include the following:
Energy-efficient building examples include the following:
With 41% of carbon emissions coming from the energy sector, decarbonizing the energy sector while providing energy security by providing sustainable, reliable, and affordable electricity is essential. 90% of the planet’s population has access to electricity, a growth of 1 billion people since 2010. Still, roughly 759 million people worldwide lack access to electricity. (World Bank 2021). Illustrating and visualizing electricity and energy usage is an effective way to increase energy efficiency.
Action required for energy resource management include the following:
Energy resource management examples include the following:
The global Covid-19 pandemic forced workers worldwide to transition from an office-centric to a home-centric work setting. Before the pandemic, the global remote versus office trend was 12% versus 88%, according to Zscaler’s work from the Work-from-Anywhere (WFA) trends dashboard. As we moved into the pandemic, the percentage of remote workers surged to 42%, and for the past 2 years, from March 2020 to June 2022, remote user traffic has been steadily sitting around 40%. (Zscaler 2022) As we are coming out of lockdowns and transitioning into a new normal, the likelihood that we will return to full-time office-based work is improbable. Still, it will be interesting what the next 2-3 years have in store.
Workers have gotten used to the increased flexibility of working remotely from anywhere. Companies leverage a wider talent pool to access resources from anywhere, not necessarily tied to a specific office location. Current technologies enable formal meetings to be replaced by digital ones, leading to less office commuting and significantly less domestic and international business travel, resulting in a direct reduction in greenhouse emissions, increased productivity, better life-work balance, and higher employee satisfaction.
Actions required for hybrid work include the following:
Here are some hybrid-work examples:
What Covid-19 taught us is that most work can be done remotely without having to meet face to face. What we learned was that efficiency went up due to a decrease in commute and business travel, but it also put a damper on innovation and social connections. It is improbable that business travel will return to the same levels pre-Covid-19, and different alternatives are being explored. Reducing the need for physical travel requires a mental shift to promoting accessibility over mobility. As we saw in the previous example, IT has generated new opportunities to reduce personal transportation’s environmental impact via hybrid work. Creating alternatives to travel also offers the potential for more flexible working where mobility is replaced with accessibility.
Actions required include the following:
Examples include the following:
Investing in e-services can increase operational efficiency and minimize environmental impacts by replacing physical manual processes with highly automated digital processes. The development of e-services includes a wide range of use cases, from replacing paper forms to document signing, digital case and document processing e-archiving, RPA and AI, and virtual twins, to mention a few. Next, some key action areas are listed, but the use cases are essentially endless.
Actions required for leveraging and promoting e-services include the following:
Here are some E-services examples:
More and more, our lives are rapidly transitioning to the consumption of digital services. They commonly fulfill three basic needs: what we need, when we need it, and where we need it. Take Spotify or Netflix, for example, which disrupted their respective industries. We rapidly went from ownership to usership, from buying a physical CD or Video Home System (VHS) tape to streaming a song, movie, or series. Other industries that have been disrupted are the automobile industry moving from car ownership to mobility/ride share, the technology industry moving from packaged software to software as a service (SaaS), and manufacturing moving from machines and devices to selling connectivity or availability. All these services have a common trait: they are circular and can be consumed repeatedly with limited constraints of EOL. Unfortunately, we do not see the same trend with physical products where producers of clothes, food, and electronic equipment digitize their processes. They can undoubtedly modify the consumption model of those goods, moving to—for example—washing machines as a service, clothes as a service, vacuuming as a service, and so on.
As we learned in Chapter 1, Our Most Significant Challenge Ahead, we have reached a yearly global consumption rate of 100 billion tons of materials. Currently, the global economy is only 8.6% circular, leading to an extensive circularity gap. (Circularity Gap 2020) Less than 10% of the materials—such as minerals, fossil fuels, metals, and biomass used in a year—are refurbished, repurposed, or recycled. Out of the 100 billion tons, 91.4 % or 91.4 tons follow a linear model. We have a tremendous circularity gap, and companies need to rapidly shift from a linear to a circular business model and embrace the subscription economy fully. Some companies are making concerted efforts to bring PaaS to market to achieve their sustainability targets and explore new recurring revenue streams.
Actions required include the following:
Examples include the following:
In the next section, we will dive deep into an exciting case study from Decathlon, which is embracing the circular economy with kids’ bike subscriptions, turning a product into a service.
Beyond applying sustainable principles to its own organization, IT can act as a catalyst for a company by providing impactful digital solutions and practices to support strategic business model transformation. Indeed, in many industries involving physical products, most of the carbon footprint is attributable to the actual good or service being produced, with a significant portion happening outside the company via its supplier’s supply chain. As a result, an impactful way to drive sustainability is to maximize each product’s utilization rate, resulting in fewer products and, ultimately, fewer emissions. But how can you then also achieve sustainable growth? By embracing the circular economy or, using Zuora’s term, the Subscription Economy® to unlock new customer-centric business models. At the heart of the Subscription Economy is the idea that customers increasingly prefer subscribing to the outcomes they want (Zoura 2021) when they want them, rather than purchasing a product with the burden of ownership.
The subscription economy has taken most industries by storm, start-ups and established companies alike, totaling a US dollars (USD) $650 billion market in 2020 and growing at 18% year-over-year. (Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS) 2021) In fact, subscription businesses in Zuora’s Subscription Economy Index have experienced 4.6x faster growth in the past decade compared to traditional businesses. (Zoura 2022) They have demonstrated impressive resilience in times of crisis, with four out of five businesses continuing to grow in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. (Zoura 2020) This success is driven by increasing consumer demand. According to Zuora’s End of Ownership report, 78% of international adults have subscription services (a seven-point increase since 2018) (Zoura 2021), and nearly two-thirds of subscribers feel more connected to companies with whom they have a direct subscription experience.
Just because a company is transitioning to a circular economy does not necessarily mean that the company or its services are sustainable. However, sustainability should be the primary driver of making the switch in transitioning from a product economy to a circular economy. Let us look at a fascinating case study from Decathlon and Zuora with all the essential ingredients for transitioning from a linear to a circular economy.
In this section, we will look at how Decathlon embraces the Subscription Economy to power new sustainable, circular, customer-centric business models. The Decathlon case study provides a recent and perfect illustration of the Subscription Economy leveraged to create savvy sustainable business models. Decathlon leverages Zoura, which is, according to the research firm Forrester, one of the leading cloud-based subscription management platforms to nurture and monetize ongoing customer relationships in their journey from experimenting to scaling new business models. The case study presented next is written in full by Yann Carré, leader of Rent, a rental service across a range of products at Decathlon, and Michael Mansard, Principal Director of Subscription Strategy and EMEA Chair of the Subscribed Institute at Zuora. (Zoura 2022)
Transforming business models – evolving to a subscription business to reach sustainability objectives
Decathlon is the world’s largest sports retailer. Founded in France in 1976, the company has a presence in 69 countries, with 1,600 stores and 93,000 employees. Decathlon manages the in-house research, design, production, logistics, and distribution of its 10,000+ products, partnering with global suppliers and marketing its brands directly to consumers in Decathlon stores.
Circularity and usage are at the heart of Decathlon’s strategic challenges. The company will not be able to achieve its 53% greenhouse gas reduction target by 2026 (Decathlon 2020) without deploying new measures at all company levels. A more sustainable design and better management of energy consumed from transportation and production are essential but insufficient. It is also essential for the company to build a sustainable business model and not just turn an unsustainable model into a more sustainable one. Simply put, a sustainable model consists of better managing the product life cycle, from design to recycling, ensuring it is possible and easier to multiply the uses for a single product over its lifespan. This translates into renting, repairing, retrofitting, and (re)selling products over a longer life cycle.
Children outgrow their bikes every 1 to 2 years, frequently replacing them. Kids’ bicycles weigh on average between 7 kilograms (kg) and 12 kg, made from highly durable materials such as steel or aluminum that generate a significant ecological footprint. Producing a bike generates an average footprint of 96 kg CO2 equivalent (CO2e). (Decathlon 2021) Finally, Decathlon’s bikes are already guaranteed for life on purchase if they are taken care of.
But why buy a durable bike for your child when you know you will have to resell it 12 months later on a second-hand site or have it sit idle in the basement? Instead, what if you could benefit from its use, plus valuable services such as maintenance, insurance against breakage, or—optionally—against theft, and have the peace of mind that you are automatically entitled to change and access the next bike you need at any time?
Since Decathlon is the world leader in children’s bikes and the world’s second-largest bike brand behind Giant, we can imagine the opportunity when Decathlon’s customer discovers, starting with children’s bikes, that they can also subscribe and rent their favorite products rather than buy them. Subscribing to a product at a young age can also create more sustainable habits early on.
In the end, there are four winners from this equation: the customer who has a higher value for money (the parent), the user who always gets the “right bike at the right time” (the child), Decathlon, and our planet. This is the positive impact of circular business models, which increase the product lifetime and quality over planned obsolescence, sustainably balancing value and risk over time. That is the promise of “Btwin Kids”.
In 2018, Decathlon started piloting its first test of a subscription service, “Btwin Kids”, based on a circular model for its children’s bikes, ranging from Euros (EUR) €3 to €8 per month. In 2020, they tested a “leasing”-type subscription program in France, with a 12/24/36 months’ commitment, with access to higher-end adult sports and e-bikes that typically have a price tag above €1,000. Finally, and shortly after, they piloted a third offering called “D RENT”, starting at €15 per month, allowing adults to flexibly subscribe to a bike or an e-bike from a “bicycle library”, with very minimal commitment (3 months). Beyond providing access to a bike, these three offerings encompass different levels of differentiating services, such as maintenance, insurance, and roadside assistance.
Subscriptions may not sound like “rocket science”. These services involve a catalog of products and services, a customer, a user, and a transaction with a merchant. So, at a high level, it may not look that different from retail, but on closer inspection, it dramatically changes a key element: the business model.
There is a massive difference. At its core, the subscription model is about shifting from growing by selling more units and pushing ownership to the end user to growing through monetizing an ongoing customer relationship thanks to ever-improving results. These personalized services continue to provide value.
In short, this means that Decathlon Rental is about transforming into a customer-centric service operator, focusing on maximizing lifetime value. Here’s proof: in the subscription model, more than 70% of a company’s revenues come from its existing subscribers. (Zoura 2022)
The following diagram illustrates the process of moving from a product-centric business model to a subscription service-centric one:
Figure 9.2 – Moving from product-centric to subscription service-centric business model (Zoura 2022)
This means significant changes on the frontend, such as the value proposition, offering design, or pricing, but also on the backend, with key supporting processes such as finance, supply chain, operations, and the underlying technology stacks. While the retailer’s focus used to be on a traditional sales checkout, it now needs to be expanded over the life cycle for each subscriber. Also, Decathlon precisely manages its product inventory through key performance indicators (KPIs) such as Days Sales of Inventory (DSI), which is critical for a retailer’s finances. Inventory is then forecasted based on complex sales and operations planning involving factors such as weather. In contrast, inventories are turned into assets that need to be tracked, depreciated, or continuously serviced in the subscription business. This flips the existing business script upside down, creating different areas of complexity by impacting the overall stock management rules, associated balance sheets, and systems.
Small-scale subscription testing may seem relatively straightforward, but scaling is much more complicated, yet beyond these challenges are also tremendous opportunities with subscription and circular models. For example, while in a traditional product model, a retailer does everything possible to bring customers back to their store, retention is the default behavior for subscriptions. First-party customer data is also now at one’s fingertips.
In a sustainable world requiring manufacturers to maximize product lifespan and utilization, subscriptions are a holy grail. One could claim that many brands and retailers, including Decathlon, have also launched “resell” initiatives addressing such a requirement. Yet, in a resell strategy, a company has to spend money to reacquire both the physical product and the customer. In a subscription model, the subscriber and the physical products are “retained” by design. They are part of the economic model from the beginning, which tends to maximize asset and customer lifetime value.
Decathlon expects to benefit from a subscription model since the company already values creating durable, sustainable, serviceable, and repairable products, offering them a further competitive edge and an incentive to keep pushing in that direction. Here’s proof: Decathlon has a strategic board-level metric and North Star: “Sustainable Revenue”. The promise of creating a new business model that reduces your footprint by optimizing use rather than producing future waste is easier said than done.
There is no “secret recipe” for subscription success. Start pragmatically as seems right for your business. Before launching their subscription service, Decathlon had the opportunity to discuss benchmarks with peers, such as a leading Nordic furniture retailer, yet Decathlon’s team understood they needed to find an authentic way to their unique DNA. So, the retailer took a hands-on “test and learn” approach to better understand rental models, the cultural differences, the particularities linked to sports, and the solution partners. Testing allowed Decathlon to build unique first-hand insights and distinguish what was most important to their subscribers.
Using a sports analogy, races are not won without long training hours; despite that, the Decathlon team acknowledges that some races will be lost and mistakes will be made. Decathlon also listened a lot and consulted those who know and who have been in the subscription model business for longer than it has.
By taking enough time for “trial and error” in 2018 for 24 months, starting with three stores, Decathlon has built a solid foundation. As of June 2022, Decathlon is ready to accelerate: 100% of the 330 French stores now offer bike subscriptions (after launching in the last 6 months), with nearly a double-digit conversion rate of subscriptions compared to buying bikes. Upon launch, Decathlon intentionally focused its communication strategy at its stores and through targeted digital campaigns. Once it expands to mass media, subscriber growth will surely accelerate further.
Sports-as-a-service is Decathlon’s vision, and the company prioritizes its subscriptions over other forms of rentals (such as short-term). A variety of equipment, including stand-up paddleboards (SUPs), kayaks, and e-bikes, is available for rental through Decathlon. The mental framework of selecting strong subscription candidates is straightforward but powerful: does the associated sport require flexibility, recurring changes, swaps, or returns of products (such as changing ages, levels, or seasons)? Or is ownership of the product linked to a clear pain point, such as the need for storage when a user lives in an apartment in a city?
A customer may need a bike to get around town or, for their child, want to practice fitness and cardio sports at home without paying for a gym membership, or rent a mountain bike for a weekend, skis for a week, or an SUP for 3 hours…
Finally, as Decathlon operates with a strong local and entrepreneurial mindset across 60 countries, it was vital to progressively embark the market units on the sustainable business model transformation journey. The local markets are now excited about the potential of subscriptions: they understand that the best price does not just require a good, sustainable product. Still, it can also mean flexibility to pay for what you use. Although renting will not replace ownership at Decathlon, the company believes renting and usership will become more and more prevalent. The new business models could be the “go-to model” for some customers, while it will complement ownership for others.
Decathlon knows that reducing its impact is a constant effort across the board. When Decathlon has internal discussions on how to build and evolve its IT/digital stack to deploy rental subscriptions, they always ask themselves two questions, as follows:
AND
Biomimicry and Darwinism teach us that nature selects what is essential and effective, and the rest disappears. Decathlon’s obsession is to offer only what is necessary, preferring frugality over hyper technology. While being omnichannel-native and data-driven, Decathlon team members know human interaction is often more important than systems.
In summary, as its subscription services continue to scale up, Decathlon is making its products more sustainable without creating a more significant, unsustainable IT footprint. At the same time, its unique “human touch” helps to create lasting value for its customers.
Although much of the technology to build sustainable solutions exists today, we need to increase the pace of innovation in creating real solutions for SDGs. We must bridge the gap between the private and public sectors and bring different actors, from corporations, academia, governments, and citizens, to co-create citizen-driven innovation. One way to do so is to take advantage of the concept of hackathons on a global scale. In the next section, you will hear from Ann Molin, the general secretary of Hack for Earth Foundation. This non-profit organization creates global hackathons creating real solutions to SDGs.
A hackathon is an innovation competition. For a limited time, often between 24 and 48 hours, participants—so-called hackers—gather and work intensively on a challenge. These challenges are created before the competition and are usually formulated as questions. The participants work in teams, where different skills complement each other. The goal is to create new digital solutions. Hackers often have open data (information that can be freely shared and reused; see a further description in the next paragraph) as raw material. A jury selects the best solutions based on several criteria, and after the award ceremony, the competition is over.
Traditionally, a hackathon is a programming competition where the majority of the participants are programmers, developers, or, in some other way, technically savvy. However, the hackathon concept can also be applied in other contexts to drive development and create embryos for new solutions quickly. A hackathon can also be an excellent activity to gather skills from widely different areas, to facilitate that competence from one area cross-fertilizes another, a concept that has been tested within the framework of Hack for Sweden, an initiative to raise awareness and demonstrate the value of the use of government agencies open data. The goal is thus to create synergy effects between different subject areas in favor of the digital solutions’ height of innovation, user-friendliness, and usefulness.
A hackathon can be based on data, but it can just as quickly be created based on the need to solve an identified problem that has to do with something else. The crucial thing is the form—to gather for a limited time, work concentrated and intensively in cross-competence teams, and have a deadline for submitting solutions. A hackathon can therefore be arranged in many different contexts—for example, in a school class, workplace, or local tenants’ association.
In addition to the stated purpose of creating well-founded new services and solutions in the chosen area, a hackathon can also be an effective tool for building new networks and breaking down barriers—so-called silos—between and within organizations, departments, areas, and sectors. When people with different backgrounds, experiences, and skills meet and work to solve a concrete problem jointly, something happens beyond sitting in a meeting and talking to each other. The experience of actively working together and co-creating a standard solution to a challenge creates a special kind of trust, expands networks, and establishes new relationships between people—relationships that have more weight because of the shared experience of co-creation. When different networks are expanded in society, the possibilities increase that the right skills are used in the proper context—for example, in innovation work.
The non-profit Hack for Earth Foundation’s mission is to create sustainable tech solutions on a global scale through citizen-driven innovation and using the hackathon method as a tool to accomplish the following:
With the three core values of sustainability, diversity, and impact, we have created a process with three steps that creates citizen-driven innovation on a global scale: Dream-Hack-Build, as represented in the following diagram:
Figure 9.3 – Hack for Earth innovation process: Dream-Hack-Build
This process has been tried out within the Hack for Sweden government mission and further developed in the Hack for Earth project at Expo 2020, in collaboration with the UN and Sweden at the world exhibition Expo 2020 Dubai. Here is how we did it.
Via the website https://dreamforearth.com, the foundation collected 1,200 dreams about the world’s future. The dreams came from citizens of 61 countries and were shared on the website in a video or text. All dreams were linked to one or more of the UN’s 17 global SDG goals by the person who shared the dream. 45 appointed ambassadors disseminated information about Dream for Earth, and some of the other specially invited influencers were representatives of the 30 partner organizations for the Hack for Earth project.
All 1,200 dreams were analyzed with an AI tool, and in this way, the foundation got a good overview of what future people in 61 countries dream of, linked to the UN’s global goals. The analyzed results from Dream for Earth were on display for 6 months in an interactive exhibition in the Sweden Pavilion at the world exhibition Expo 2020 in Dubai from October 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022. In the Dream for Earth exhibition, visitors could share their dream for the world linked to global goals and participate in the Dream for Earth results. More than 500,000 people visited the Sweden Pavilion at Expo 2020 in Dubai. The results from Dream for Earth were used to formulate challenges for the Hack for Earth hackathon.
The foundation shared the analyzed results of the Dream for Earth campaign with the third partner organization for the project. Five concrete challenges were formulated in the seven challenge categories for the Hack for Earth hackathon. This way, the challenges in the hackathon were relevant to what people worldwide believe are important issues for our future. The seven challenge categories, Health, Human Rights, Environment, Sustainable Society, Water, Education, and Partnership, were created in collaboration with the UN. For more information, visit https://www.hackforearth.com/challenges.
The global Hack for Earth 2021 hackathon took place online for 2 weeks, from October 22 to November 2021. 1,371 teams from 121 countries participated in the competition to create sustainable solutions to the UN’s 17 SDGs.
During the hackathon, mentors (experts in their fields from around the world) were available to the competing teams in various areas of expertise, ranging from cyber security to human rights. 20 lectures for the participants were organized in various relevant subject areas by partner organizations and specially invited experts. The foundation’s project team was available to answer questions around the clock and broadcast live sessions for participants via the foundation’s YouTube channel during the hackathon so that the hackers could get fast answers to their questions.
Seven jury groups were appointed, with representatives from the Hack for Earth 32 partner organizations. The jury groups assessed the solutions received in the seven challenge categories (Health, Human Rights, Environment, Sustainable Society, Water, Education, and Partnership). They selected a winner in each category based on six jury criteria. The winning teams had members from 18 different countries.
The seven winners entered Build for Earth, a unique acceleration program formulated and organized by the Hack for Earth Foundation. The mission of Build for Earth is to support and guide Hack for Earth winners in creating simple tools for the good of society, making great ideas come to life and not letting them stay on paper.
Based on current research and global innovation expertise on sustainable innovation, the Build for Earth acceleration program entails the following, customized to the seven winning solutions’ needs. The 6-month program is coordinated and executed in close collaboration with the Hack for Earth partner community, involving guest lecturers and mentors. You can check out more examples of Hack for Earth winning solutions made a reality at https://www.hackforearth.com/winners.
A common problem reported by the private and public sectors is that innovation happens in fenced-off silos with minimum collaboration between crucial actors such as corporations, academia, governments, and citizens. Applying the concept of hackathons is a great way to infuse citizen-driven innovation to create global, scalable, and sustainable solutions. Hopefully, the case study from Hack for Earth Foundation will inspire you to arrange your hackathons either within your company or open to the public, or why not get involved with the foundation itself and leverage the global innovation platform that has been built, connecting critical stakeholders around the world, including the UN?
Now that we have reached the end of this chapter, you should hopefully have a better insight into how IT, SustainTech, and CleanTech can unlock different opportunities to develop or leverage different types of sustainable solutions. In this chapter, we looked into ten specific areas on how technology can be applied for carbon emission reporting, sustainable sourcing and manufacturing, environmentally friendly transportation, energy-efficient buildings, energy resource management, hybrid work, eco-friendly travel, e-services, and turning a product into a service.
Furthermore, we looked further into how the trend of moving from ownership to usership unlocks several sustainable circular opportunities in a wide range of industries.
We explored two exciting case studies. The first case study was from Decathlon, which is taking a product, kids’ bikes, and turning it into a circular business model, a PaaS. The second one was from Hack for Earth. This non-profit organization is connecting the world in global online hackathons, where they aim to create real solutions to the UN’s SDGs.
This chapter marks the end of the book’s “what” section. After reading this chapter, you should have a wealth of examples to apply sustainable solutions and develop new sustainable circular products and services. In the following three chapters, why will start exploring the “how” by assessing our sustainable IT maturity, establishing a GHG emission baseline, creating a sustainable IT strategy, and turning your strategy into action.
If you would like to know more, please refer to the following resources:
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