Why Sustainability, Agility and Digitalization go Hand-in-Hand

In today’s dynamic and interconnected world, organizations must be able to cope and thrive in conditions of crisis and change. Therefore, sustainability, agility and digitalization have become buzzwords describing attributes of an organization that lead to the ability to adapt to change. The COVID-19 crises is the most recent example of a global crises stressing the implications and challenges of change and the need of efficient and effective actions.

Sustainability and Digitalization

During the corporate innovation process, considerations whether innovations in question offer a certain value for society are becoming necessary. New business models scale much faster as a result of digitization and thus sooner reach ecological and social limits. Companies can prevent this by integrating sustainability right from the beginning in their strategy. For companies, the greatest opportunities for profit and growth in the long term emerge if their innovations have a positive impact on society. In the future, it will be crucial for companies to realize that future economic success is based on the interplay between innovation and sustainability. To give an example, linking digital technologies with environmental technologies enables optimized production processes that use fewer natural resources through conntected plants and supply chains. The BMBF has launched the initiave "Digital GreenTech - Environmental Technology Meets Digitization". Projects within the scope of this initiative address questions like: How can artificial intelligence help improve recycling processes? Which digital tools can be used to monitor and control water supply and disposal networks more efficiently? How can complex material flows be tracked in real time?

Sustainability and Agility

Agility has emerged in the context of digitization to streamline processes, shift the focus back to the customer and change the management system. Agile project management delivers flexible results in a short period of time through interative and incremental processes, which in turn enable immediate adjustments. Does this development have the potential to accelerate the introduction of the circular economy? Previous agile methods can certainly not be transferred one-to-one to circular economy, but their approaches seem promising. Experts like Prof. Dr. Rene Schmidpeter claim that the trends agility and sustainability are mutually reinforcing. However, "reinforcement" does not imply that agile companies are sustainable and sustainable companies are agile. In fact, there are many agile but non-sustainable companies in the global economy. In the descibed interplay, agility sets the speed and sustainability the direction for development. Hence, only if the organizations chooses sustainable objectives as the direction of strategic actions and change, agility contributes to the corporate sustainable success. 

Sources:

Ludwig, Volker (2020): Nachhaltige Nachhaltigkeit – mit Agilität in Richtung Kreislaufwirtschaft, Online available: Nachhaltige Nachhaltigkeit – mit Agilität in Richtung Kreislaufwirtschaft | EPALE (europa.eu)

Haufe (2018): Warum Nachhaltigkeit, Digitalisierung und Agilität Hand in Hand gehen, Online available: Nachhaltigkeit und Transformation gehen Hand in Hand | New Management (haufe.de)

Hofacker, Christina (2021): Agilität trifft Nachhaltigkeit, Online available: Agilität trifft Nachhaltigkeit - RUHR PM

BMBF (2021): BMBF fördert digitale Umwelttechnologien, Online available: BMBF fördert digitale Umwelttechnologien - BMBF