How Organizations Can Drive Sustainable Innovation That Transcends Business Boundaries

By Manoj Nair

Sustainability is front and center just about everywhere. There is a paradigm shift underway with organizations across India focusing on building a better business for a net-zero world. Prioritizing sustainability isn’t just a business imperative but crucial to driving long-term competitiveness and innovation. In addition, it also presents numerous opportunities for employees, stakeholders, and customers alike.

In fact, EY’s 2024 ESG GCC report reveals that over half of India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs) are proactively adopting the Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda, signaling a shift towards sustainable innovation and responsible growth. On a positive note, about 70% of GCCs are eying tech collaborations for ESG implementation, the report indicates.

Building a Sustainability Charter 

So, how can organizations drive an effective sustainability agenda? The first step is to identify a sustainability purpose and tell the story the right way organizations can steer investments and efforts towards initiatives that can deliver the greatest impact on core issues. For instance, companies can address.

Secondly, it is important to integrate sustainability factors into core business strategy and other activities involving daily business operations and execution.  Embedding sustainability practices in day-to-day business operations and the value chain leads to a positive impact on business performance. This involves redesigning the corporate ecosystem that creates value employees, our supply chains, society, and the planet.

How Fujitsu is Engineering a Sustainable Future 

As a global IT services, solutions, and technology provider, Fujitsu is committed to engineering a sustainable tomorrow through technology and innovation. With innovation at our core, we are increasingly leveraging technology to scale for the future, and inspiring new sustainability-oriented innovation for our customers.

Our commitment to fostering a sustainable world through innovation is reflected in our world-leading technologies. And we’re witnessing this transition at the ground level.

For instance, FUJITSU-MONAKA – a 2 nanometer Arm-based CPU slated to be launched in the financial year of 2027 focuses on providing an energy efficient solution to meet the carbon neutrality goals for a green data center supercomputing facility.

We also aim to realize a net zero society. For example, to promote the adoption of zero-emission vehicles in India and streamline planning and investment in EV charging infrastructure, Fujitsu launched trials focused on New Delhi and Mumbai in December 2023.

Transforming Sustainability Strategy into Action

As we strive to advance our mission of building a healthier planet and society by investing in ESG, we are working to advance positive social, environmental and economic change for all. We’ve undertaken several initiatives in our organization to meet our sustainability and we also work with NGOs to achieve our goals.

Here are a few initiatives designed to reduce climate impact: 

Minimizing carbon footprint: We are committed to minimizing our carbon footprint, diminishing the environmental impacts by driving a significant reduction in operational complexities. Over the last year, over 20k volunteers participated in various activities on and off the campus to support our journey towards sustainability. We are taking steps to achieve our vision of building a net zero society. At Fujitsu India, we are working towards integrating environmental considerations into developmental projects. With over 570 trees planted, Fujitsu Pune campus has a 31.3% green cover, which is close to the national target of 33% green cover. Over 60% of the area in the Pune campus is open space (green cover and open spaces). We also undertake carbon sequestration – total carbon stored in trees at Fujitsu Consulting India Pune campus was 62.57 tons and the total carbon sequestered in trees at Pune campus is 1.251 tons.

Taking charge of lowering emissions: We also have EV charging stations in the Pune campus along with a cycle stand which helps drive holistic wellness for all. Our OWC helps in managing the waste from our canteen facilities as organic manure for our 4-acre-garden areas. Around 30% of the campus is powered by solar energy.

Minimizing water use:  We are also taking concrete action to reduce our climate-related impacts, replenish watersheds and minimize water use, innovate more and help improve people’s lives. Through our partnership with Ecosan Services Foundation (ESF), we are focused on promoting sustainable sanitation and water management. Over the past 10 years, ESF has reached out to 2 lakh school children to create awareness about WASH and to develop tailor-made sustainable models for every needy school in and around Maharashtra. We have undertaken school rainwater harvesting systems that help recharge up to 6 lakh litres water.

We also work closely with our NGO partners to help solve societal challenges and our employees are our biggest source of motivation. We have volunteered in various activities with several NGO partners and government and local authorities to bring a smile to people’s faces.

Committing to on-ground transformation

At Fujitsu, the sustainability approach is fully integrated into our core business operations, and we are committed to on-ground transition and transformation helping improve peoples’ life and society at large. it is important to accelerate this progress and take sustainable actions for our planet.

(The author is Manoj Nair, Head of the India Global Delivery Center (GDC), Fujitsu, and the views expressed in this article are his own)