Digitalization and sustainability

After two years of a health crisis and facing the blatant need for economic recovery, experts agree that the digitalization and sustainability formula is the best for this recovery. We are thus offered the opportunity to create a new economy that centers on innovation and respect for the environment.

European economic aid is linked to sustainability and digitalization, and the financial world warns of the risk of climate change to the economy. Given these realities, the business sector must join the ecological transition and digitalization to make Europe competitive in international markets.

Digitalization, a key factor in this duo, has become an essential process that businesses must undergo to maintain their competitiveness. Understanding how to incorporate new technologies is key to ensuring business survival and growth. A true digital transformation goes beyond making sporadic investments in digital supports and creating or renewing a website. A real digital transformation implies a profound renewal of corporate culture, just as sustainable commitment must be demonstrated with solid, credible projects with substance, avoiding pseudo-sustainable actions that lead nowhere and reduce competitiveness. Therefore, digitalization is not a means, but an ally in this challenge. The sustainable revolution needs the digital one, and vice versa.

This challenge that companies face in transforming their productive fabric necessitates the cooperation of all economic and social agents, mobilizing sustainable investment, and developing new technologies. For this to be possible, states must invest in sustainability, as it is the race for sustainability and digitalization that will determine our competitive capacity and our well-being.

In these last two years of the pandemic, no one can ignore that the world has changed and is doing so at a dizzying speed. Digitalization is, therefore, an imperative, a key factor to face the path towards a circular and sustainable economy that makes us rich in resources, that creates value, new business models, and solutions adapted to the new environment, and that addresses pending environmental challenges. Aspects of technology such as gas emissions, the transformation of traditional industry into an Industry 4.0, the commitment to safe and sustainable mobility, the promotion of teleworking, or the recycling of technological waste are just some of the aspects that digitalization can favor. Companies must be prepared to face the challenges of digitalization, and their users trained to work in a digitalized environment, because those who do not follow this path will be left behind.