Innovation

Innovation Zone began as a test project at the beginning of 2016 so that Cybercom consultants could experience it and see what changes can be done until it is released. Now the project has expanded in the company, especially for the new employees where much of their work is provided in Innovation Zone. In 2018 the IZ department made it possible to have a hackathon that was the first in the world, after that the innovation team saw that many people want to work and function after the 17 Sustainability Development Goals.

The 17 Sustainability Development Goals together with the Innovation Zone created the world's first deep learning enabled video camera named AWS DeepLens, this camera helps developers who are at their first steps in the developing world to learn it simpler by tutorials, code, and pre-trained machine learning models. Once you have your AWS account set up it only takes 10 minutes to register the device and launch your first project, it has multiple models for the developers to understand how to create one or if you have a little imagination you can start by creating your own model. With this new technology, everyone can get how developing works and as your knowledge grows it could evolve into more possibilities that Cybercom offers you by using Sustainability Development Goals together with new technologies it makes easier to find how the world is.

"So we tried to incorporate the 17 development goals in our business and help our customers think of sustainability when doing it any project. Many people are quite vague when it comes to 17 Sustainability Development Goals but what we think is important is when you start a new development of a project or system if you don't think of these when you start you might end up having a product which doesn't take care of these which will be bad for you as company because many people want to have sustainable products and systems and its like a competitive advantage to support this and that what we try to tell our customers that its not only good for the environment if you don’t this but its also good for you, you can make money by being more sustainable." (John Widbrand, Cybercom Management Consultant Advisory Role)

Inspiration

Sustainability focuses on meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. The concept of sustainability is composed of three pillars: economic, environmental and social - also known informally as profits, planet, and people. Cybercom manages to cover all the three pillars and has made big changes for customers to trust and use their services. They actively try to reduce their own impact on the environment and conduct meetings on how can they change the environment and contribute to profitability and sustainable development through energy and cost savings and on how to reduce the consumption of finite resources.

Cybercom recognized that in order to achieve the 17 Global Sustainability Development Goals more forceful action is demanded from the company and its clients. The company is actively training its sales force and management in Digital Sustainability because it recognizes that opportunities can be found in SDGs, opportunities such as stronger collaborations, scalable solutions and a swifter rate of change together with their clients.

One of the SDGs that Cybercom has been adamant about following is number 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production). They have been implementing this goal by ensuring that their customers have the most sustainable production that they can achieve and the most sustainable patterns. Goal 12 is meant to decouple economic growth from resource use and Cybercom’s use of Digitalization and thrives into implementing it for their customers is a clear show of support for the SDGS.

"From 2011 our CEO was invited to go to the UN conference in Washington, the Sustainable Development Goals, he was the first Nordic IT Manager CEO to go to the conference. I think that's the way you have to approach companies because it's all about to make money and in the end, if they can see how necessary are those 17 Sustainability Development Goals. We had and will have some sustainability ambassadors, we also have a global sustainability and marketing departments which are in Stockholm." (John Widbrand, Cybercom Management Consultant Advisory Role)

Overall impact

Innovation Zone Prototype department is where the developing process of ideas begin. There, the company consultants provide tangible results allowing their clients to understand and explain their vision with their innovation ideas. The whole point of this department is to reduce the risk for a client project, to learn and support the client decision for coming investments in new business and technology. Another department is named Incubator where the next step of creating a project by challenging new ideas and provide business and technological expertise to help the next startup process. A method that Cybercom uses to make all the innovation zones possible is named experience-based innovation and the key of that is trial and error instead of overthinking giving it enough freedom to test your ideas and technology. One of the Cybercom goals was to have a group of IZ (Innovation Zone).

Business benefit

Cybercom has developed a process that helps companies achieve net positive impact on society, in other words, the companies give more than they take and their products add more public benefit when they are used. This whole process is based on Business Model Canvas methodology where they added a sustainability filter, for that to happen they introduced innovation, business models or products that are correlated with the sustainability characteristics. The sustainability characteristics were drawn up after studying whether innovation, business models or products will work in a world of 11 billion people.

Cybercom has developed a process in order to support their clients on the way to digital sustainability. This process is divided into 3 stages. First stage is where the company is evaluated and its current sustainability contribution is ranked. Second stage is where future net positivity is assessed and the final step is where the project transitions to implementation.

As previously stated, technology and innovation are essential for the development of a company. In order to better incorporate technology, changes have to be made to the organizational structure of the firm. Cybercom explains to clients and decision-makers the digital solutions for sustainable development since the company sees these as opportunities. That is why the company participates in contexts such as the UN Global Compact Private Sector Forum and why it constantly tries to develop solutions for digital sustainability.

Social and environmental benefit

Cybercom’s sustainability goal began at the moment when they participated at the UN Global Compact Private Sector Forum. During one year they managed to categorize and track their client assignments and solutions and came up with six sustainability effects: energy savings, dematerialization, servicification, reduced use of resources, security, other product or service development. All of these six sustainability effects have the role to maintain a better environment by saving resources that are not useful to the customers, by converting the physical materials or products to digital or electronic form. Cybercom’s priorities are strengthened as the changes in digital business evolution begin to be significantly more visible in the sustainable development. The digital business evolution marks the continuous changes in technology, smart devices etc, that connect people through an intelligent digital network.

https://www.cybercom.com/contentassets/d5e6e959d28945b38f7b7af6e99d099c/1140x640cybercom-internet_story-main_website_lo_05.mp4

Interview

John Widbrand, Management Consultant Advisory Role