Innovation

Ten years ago Eviden had the goal of becoming the first IT company to have 0 carbon emissions. At the time this was a very bold statement, as it was almost unheard of for an IT company to be able to develop carbon neutral softwares. For Eviden reducing their carbon emissions was an essential aspect and project because global warming is increasingly becoming an issue in modern society. Eviden developed a system called “GreenSpectre” that is able to track the number of mg of CO2 emitted as a result of their software developments. With this system Eviden is able to monitor and decrease their emissions. Eviden then was able to create a handbook outlining how to develop and create sustainable software. With this handbook, Eviden published this work allowing fellow competitors and other IT companies to implement their findings allowing them to reduce their carbon footprint as well. They also are involved in training other companies in an effort to reduce the carbon footprint of this industry. This was a huge step forward in the software space because Eviden is not gatekeeping their findings allowing other companies to reduce their emissions as well. 

The process that Eviden uses to measure the effectiveness of their carbon reduction is pretty straightforward. Before Eviden starts a project, they measure the carbon emissions for a specific piece of software. Once the project is completed, they then measure the emissions again to see if an improvement was made.   

Inspiration

We interviewed Eviden's Jeroen Heikens, the global head of portfolio specific to application services. Although he is not the leader of this STG development, he emphasized just how passionate he really is about making this huge step forward. In the interview at minute 8:00 Jeroen stated that, “It was many years ago when our CEO made a really bold statement in the market. That they want to be the first IT company worldwide that has 0 carbon emissions”. Although he did not specify exactly who the CEO was at the time that said this, he expressed that this bold move influenced him and his team to start focusing on the environment and began searching for solutions to reduce their carbon footprint. Jeroen also stated that this innovation was not inspired for profit as they have started creating handbooks that explain the process and Eviden has also started training various companies on how to create a more environmentally friendly software system. This demonstrated that Eviden genuinely has good intentions with this system and is doing it for the greater of the world. 

Overall impact

The impact of Eviden's decision to limit the amount of carbon dioxide emissions in the information technology industry can be seen in many different areas. The primary impact of the innovation is also the most obvious which is its environmental benefits. This innovation helps the environment by minimizing the amount of harmful greenhouse gasses that get released into earth’s atmosphere. 

The second impact of the innovation is business related. In recent years, customers have placed a larger emphasis on sustainability in their buying decisions. Because of this, Eviden’s innovation of increasing their sustainability gives them a competitive advantage over their competitors. Additionally, this emphasis on sustainability generates positive publicity for the company and helps their public relations.

Finally, Eviden’s innovation has the impact of creating a tighter, more sustainable community in the IT industry. The first way that this community is built is that a lot of the employees of sustainable companies are happier at their job because of the feeling that they are making a difference. Second, because Eviden published a guidebook, they are able to help their customers, competitors, and other individuals make their software more sustainable. According to Jeroen, they promoted the guide on LinkedIn and received plenty of feedback and praise from the people who read it. This positive feedback from the community suggests that sustainability is a subject that there is passion for among programmers.

Business benefit

The innovation of sustainable information technology software benefits the business most obviously by giving it a selling point and competitive advantage. Jeroen mentioned that although price is still the number one factor their customers make their decisions based on, if the price is similar, environmental sustainability becomes a key priority of the decision making process. Unfortunately, although it is safe to assume that this sustainability played a major role in Eviden becoming more profitable, Jeroen said that they are unable to track the exact financial impacts of the changes so this evidence is simply anecdotal.

Another benefit this innovation brings to the business is that employees are happier with their roles. This increased employee wellbeing is due to the fact that all people want to work somewhere where they are driving positive change so they can derive a sense of purpose. Because of this, the fact that Eviden is an industry leader in environmental action at a time where climate change has made the environment a key issue to so many people. Furthermore, employee wellbeing is beneficial for the business as a whole, not just the employee. First off, this is because happier employees are less likely to quit so the company’s employee retention rate should increase. Second, happier employees are more productive than unhappy employees which makes the business more efficient and therefore more profitable. Once again, although it is assumed that Eviden’s employees are happier now, there has not been any studies or surveys that Jeroen knows about so this information is still a little bit speculative.

Social and environmental benefit

The key benefit this innovation has on society is that it protects the environment by minimizing the carbon dioxide emissions produced by information technology software. Since the mid twentieth century, it has been known that human activity contributes to climate change. According to science, the main culprit for the negative environmental impacts caused by humans has been greenhouse gas emissions with the most common greenhouse gas being carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide traps heat in earth’s atmosphere as well as creating smog and countless other negative side effects which is why it is so important to limit our emissions. 

Eviden continuously minimizes the carbon dioxide emissions caused by IT software by implementing a strategy whenever they run a project. According to Jeroen, before projects, Eviden measures the carbon emissions for a piece of software, then once they have done their work, they measure the emissions again to see the improvements they have made. Eviden is able to measure the improvement because of their collaboration with the company Greenspector that released technology that is able to track the milligrams of carbon dioxide that computer programs produce. On top of this, Eviden publishes a guide that teaches people how to minimize their software’s emissions and they have even made this information available to their competitors. Additionally, they promote this guidebook all over the internet including an especially successful campaign of LinkedIn where they heard plenty of feedback on how helpful the guide is. Finally, Eviden does training and consulting for other companies to help them. Jeroen even mentioned that they trained a British IT company on increasing their sustainability just this week.

Interview

Jeroen Heikens, Global head of portfolio specific to application services