Tag Archives: Digital technologies and innovation

The New Virtual Enterprises Building Blocks

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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2021

I have to say I loved reading this from the IBM Institute for Business Value. It provides a greater fit with much of what I was struggling to articulate in a recent post “Missing the building blocks of ecosystem design in the Energy Roadmap by IEA“; I can relate to what the IBM report conveys as the future way to organize and undertake business or to bring together all the parts of the Energy System roadmap suggested in the recent IEA report.

The report “The Virtual Enterprise – The Cognitive Enterprise in a virtual world.” gives a new view to managing in both virtual worlds and enterprises. I do recommend reading it.

To quote Mark Foster, Senior Vice President, IBM Services: Continue reading →

Missing the building blocks of ecosystem design in the Energy Roadmap by IEA

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https://theconversation.com/humanitys-sustainability-is-no-excuse-for-abandoning-planet-earth-80699

I have been reading a groundbreaking report,  the world’s first comprehensive study on how to achieve a“Net-Zero by 2050: a roadmap for the global energy system“(referred to as NZE here in this link). It is produced by the International Energy Agency (IEA)

Why is this so important? Well, it is about the most dramatic change in our Energy Systems globally and emphasised that this decade is pivotal to reaching the targeted goal of net-zero by mid-century. Each decade will bring dramatic change to all of our lives. Our planet is under significant threat of global warming that will impact how we can live and perhaps survive.

This 2050 target is in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement, the foundations of global consensus to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5c. This requires nothing short of a total transformation of the energy systems, a complex “beast” that provides us with the basic energy sources we need to survive, live, build and grow.

The report sets out a cost-effective and economically productive pathway, resulting in a clean, dynamic and resilient energy economy dominated by renewables like solar and wind instead of fossil fuels. The report also examines key uncertainties, such as the roles of bioenergy, carbon capture and behavioural changes in reaching net zero.

The Energy System is a complex Ecosystem. Continue reading →

Sustainable Value Creation

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Sustainability has become a hot topic in the corporate board rooms across the globe in the past year. The World Economic Forum held a virtual forum for business leaders to determine a set of Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics – universal, comparable disclosures that focused on people, planet, prosperity and governance on which companies can report, regardless of industry or region. This was held in January 2020 with a direct result of a consultant paper “Toward Common Metrics and Consistent Reporting of Sustainable Value Creation being produced and discussed going forward.

This consultative work continued with a White paper in September 2021, “Measuring Stakeholder Capitalism Towards Common Metrics and Consistent Reporting of Sustainable Value Creation. 

Recently, this had a following on with a beneficial further white paper in March 2021 called “A Leapfrog Moment for China in ESG Reporting“, which provides all involved or interested in Sustainability to refer to. I will be coming back to this particular report at another time. What caught my attention was singling out China and how many of their leading organizations are undertaking sustainability into their corporate goals, plans and operations.

Within these three documents, you gain a handy set of insights to build a sustainable pathway. Continue reading →

Looking beyond ESG

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I have been undertaking some investigative work on sustainability. It is fascinating to read, evaluate and recognize how each business is tackling its response to this. Sustainability has become increasingly important when facing a climate crisis and a rapidly changing world where nature is significantly under threat. It is we, the human race, that has prompted the crisis but have the power to change this into a more equitable world.

You get the growing sense that various stakeholders around our businesses are placing pressure on organizations to respond far more to managing sustainability, especially the large, more global ones. The growing concerns will form around Governance, Strategy, Risk Management and Metrics and Targets for distinct disclosures relating to their business.

Business tends to fall back on the broad ESG themes

Business tends to ask the question, “How do we offer sustainability pathways to drive business value? Now that is a very targeted positioning, and you naturally ask the follow-up questions. Questions to naturally frame this are “how do we reduce costs and risks?  “to strengthen the trust with stakeholders” and “find the new growth opportunities”.  These perhaps give a sustainability pathway internally but do these really tackle the bigger external issues such as climate challenges, environmental degradation or social inequality. Is that the role of the business or Governments and institutions set up to balance and defend, like the UN or the WEF.

Business often gets caught in its own world searching for customer impact, making sure it is empowering its people, applying technology appropriately and having a growth mindset. These are very business goal-driven and, if applied well, do deliver a more sustainable world but is this enough in today’s world? I think this is too narrow, we need to really step outside and view how our purpose builds into the external issues, that we all face, recognizing a significant crisis is ahead.

Much as I can relate to the ESG approach, I am not confident it is pushing hard enough as a framework. Continue reading →

IoT and Sustainability: How economic growth and sustainability fit together.

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So, what is the future for humanity, and where does technology with a purpose fit? Can we envision a new era of sustainability powered by IoT?

An exchange recently between Dr Peter Körte, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Strategy Officer of Siemens AG, with Martin Powell, Head of Sustainability & Environment Initiatives at Siemens Financial Services, tackled these questions in a discussion facilitated by Oisin Lunny as the host.

During the Hannover Messe week (12- 16th April 2021), this exchange took place as part of Siemens events in a specially constructed virtual environment. I would recommend finding time to visit this three-day event as it will be available for some weeks. It really is worth it; sign up here, sie.ag/3tnhVD4, to gain access.

So, can IoT and Sustainability fit together to give us real economic growth? Continue reading →

The Need for an Electrical Digital Twin

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Providing a digital twin solution in manufacturing is becoming a critical part of managing the complexity of the environment that entities have to increasingly operate within.

As digital twins become critically important, entities are beginning to adopt this “twinning” concept dramatically, and within the Energy Transition we are undertaking, it will be no different.

A digital twin enables a Utility, for example, to visualize its assets, track the constant changes occurring consistently, and make better decisions on the performance optimization.

Wikipedia offers a useful clarification of the Digital Twin.

“A digital twin is a digital replica of a living or non-living physical entity. By bridging the physical and the virtual world, data is transmitted seamlessly, allowing the virtual entity to exist simultaneously with the physical entity.

Digital twin refers to a digital replica of potential and actual physical assets (physical twin), processes, people, places, systems, and devices that can be used for various purposes.

The digital representation provides both the elements and the dynamics of how an Internet of things device operates and lives throughout its life cycle. Digital twins integrate the internet of things, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and software analytics with spatial network graphs to create living digital simulation models that update and change as their physical counterparts change.”

As the energy transition is presently undergoing such radical changes, the managing of energy and especially grid management is getting highly complex and the digitalization of this is becoming vital to manage differently. Why?

Continue reading →

The battle of the energy ecosystems

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We are currently locked into a ‘battle of ecosystems.’ where our very existence is requiring one side to win, it simply must, to be more dominant.

This ecosystem battle is between those that are highly vested in the fossil-based energy supply system of today and those that are forcing change into a more renewable reliant energy system as quickly as possible.

We are pushing so much of the principles and theories of ecosystems to the maximum test in the outcomes we wish to achieve, in the energy transition we require.

We are determining our future planet and what defines a healthy ecosystem in a very ad-hoc, self-determining way. The ambitions of so many vested interests need fresh evaluations in any new socio-economic structure. We must bring these two competing energy views into a balance. A balance that allows the planet to return to one where we, as humans, can be more in harmony with all that is around us, in the air we breathe, in sharing this earth in its diversity of resources, living creatures, and what it offers in natural wonder. Continue reading →

A dark day for the climate and the fight over global warming?

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Sadly, yesterday, 4th November 2019, the United States began the process of withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, notifying the UN of its intention to leave.

The notification starts a one-year process of exiting the global climate change accord, culminating the day after the 2020 US election.

The Paris agreement brought together 188 nations to combat climate change. The Paris accord agreed in 2015, committed the US and 187 other countries to keep rising global temperatures below 2C above pre-industrial levels and attempting to limit them even more, to a 1.5C rise. Climate change, or global warming, refers to the damaging effect on the atmosphere of gases, or emissions, released from industry and agriculture.

In a publication “The Paris Climate Agreement versus the Trump Effect: Countervailing Forces for Decarbonisation,”  IIEA Senior Fellow Joseph Curtin argues that the “Trump Effect” has created a powerful countervailing force acting against the momentum which the Paris Agreement on climate change hoped to generate. The real concern is that this decision will give instability and uncertainty until broader and deeper structural factors within the US political economy can be addressed as their (the USA) issues around energy resourcing, infrastructure, and urbanization are as much in crisis as anyone else. Can this national determination by the present administration go against the tide of so many? Continue reading →

The Orchestration Role in Any Business Ecosystem Design

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This visual has held my attention for a reasonable time. It deals, in my mind, with orchestration well for reflecting the managing of a business ecosystem and how to organize the partners and parts within this.

Although its original intention was a digital orchestration, it tells the story for any orchestration of platforms or working within ecosystems that a business needs to manage.

Here, the model is a singular operating model, but applying it to a collaborative environment has most of the essential components that need true orchestrating.

There is a growing body of work about “orchestration” and its need in the business world. Orchestration has become synonymous with managing or dealing with (specifically) external partners. The need is to learn to cooperate to produce something different and original, usually in a platform and ecosystem arrangement.

I am continually reading about scale, modular structures, governance, the advantage of asset-light business models where the possibilities of speed and breadth of open innovation need to “kick in.” Orchestration can take on a lot, but we need to define the role a little more, in my opinion.

I often wonder if all this orchestration through ecosystem design does achieve that radical breakthrough or have become just another solution or coordinating mechanism and a convenient “tag” to attach to it to consider? Continue reading →

Grappling with complex ecosystems, energy transitions, and planet earth.

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Source: https://theconversation.com/humanitys-sustainability-is-no-excuse-for-abandoning-planet-earth-80699. Time to go? Shutterstock

It has been fashionable to “hang” any network of relationships with the ecosystem tag; it has become the de jour or trendy label to suggest this announced initiative indicates it is complicated and highly valuable.

Well, in all honesty, most ecosystem “tags” are only an extension of building out a more significant community than the one previously, looking to deal with increasing complexity and expecting commercial gain, well that alone is not an ecosystem approach.

Ecosystems fascinate me; they do have a significant opportunity to change what is existing for something new. The need is to balance the healthy interactions and the conditions for that environment to flourish. Of course, many people might argue, “so what is wrong with what we have got?” Often I can’t disagree with this view, we do replace what works seemingly well because of our need to leave our own “footprint” in the world.

In Business we have “stolen” this ecosystem concept from its original meaning: “An ecosystem is a geographic area where plants, animals, and other organisms, as well as weather and landscape, work together to form a bubble of life.”

In business terms, we have taken this into these larger communities that interact through their network connections; they are dynamic or aim to be better than the previous structure. Continue reading →