Create Sustainability Impact with Data Entrepreneurship for Behavior Change
Ronald Buijsse, Jheronimus Academy of Data Science , the Netherlands
Facts don’t change the world
Since a long time, data has been used to inform people on how the world is doing. Especially the report of the Club of Rome in 1972 did have a big impact. For the first time there was a signal related to the use of natural resources which was alarming. However, next to a lot of media attention, the practical impact was low. Although we knew there were limits to growth, our economies and population kept growing. Since then, there have been several warnings, via developments in nature, but also in meetings, movies or agreements such as Earth Summit Rio de Janeiro (1992), the Kyoto Protocol (1997), the movie An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and the Paris Agreement (2015). And now, in 2020, we are still measuring, collecting data and still struggling to make a bold turn. Why? Are the figures not convincing enough? As Hans Rosling with his Gapminder and Factfulness book learned us: we all make decisions with the perception of the reality we grew up with. And it’s not easy to accept and change to live another story. Even when the facts, the challenges, the goals and even the intentions are there.
Entrepreneurship can make a change
So what will make the change? Can we, as individuals make the change? Can we rely on governments to make the change? Or NGOs? It is clear that we as individuals can contribute a lot by changing our buying behavior, as that will also change the supply side. But it’s also clear that for a real change in buying behavior new solutions need to be there. Elon Musk did prove this in a very clear way with Tesla. But we don’t need this change just for cars. We need it for almost everything. For food, for clothing, for housing, for public transport. And entrepreneurs are needed to make that happen. Especially entrepreneurs who are able to create flexible, adaptable and sustainable solutions. Making use of globally shared sustainability insights. As still much waste is being created because we work in very rigid ways with very rigid solutions. Not making use of global knowledge and latest technologies and not adapted to personal or social situations.
Data Science for Sustainable Entrepreneurship will support the change
What is the best fuel for creating these flexible, adaptable and sustainable solutions and the related buying behavior change? Sustainable Entrepreneurship and Data! We can use data to find, create and exploit sustainable solutions, even in an early phase, when the circumstances are not right yet. We can use data to inform and convince people. We can use data to prevent waste, by collecting in a better way what people need when and in what quantity. We can use data to show faster and better the impact of these more sustainable solutions and make changes whenever needed. But we need entrepreneurship to make it happen! The combination is called Data Science for Sustainable Entrepreneurship: the art of creating, finding and exploiting sustainable opportunities, driven by insights from data.
Is this new?
The use of Data Science for global development has already been recognized in the 2000–2015 period as summarized in the 2015 Millenium Development Goals (MDG) report, published at the launch of the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) plan . Already on page 10 of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals Report, four pages are spend on the topic: “Measure what we treasure: sustainable data for sustainable development”. There the United Nations states: “The MDG monitoring experience has clearly demonstrated that effective use of data can help to galvanize development efforts, implement successful targeted interventions, track performance and improve accountability. Thus sustainable development demands a data revolution to improve the availability, quality, timeliness and disaggregation of data to support the implementation of the new development agenda at all levels”. Therefore, the lessons were clear, and follow up was created. For example by SDG Pulse , the UNCTAD’s annual statistical publication reporting on developments relating to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). And the SDG Compass, which provides guidance for companies on how they can align their strategies as well as measure and manage their contribution to the realization of the SDGs.
So how to make the change now?
Developments in the 2015–2020 period have proved that even the creation of a global agreement and working with the right statistics is not a guarantee for making change happen. Ambitious plans in all regions have proven that also good plans needs feet to get them running. Only when solar panels became available in a price range with a payback period of less than 10 years, about 180 years after the photovoltaic invention, people started to invest. So we urgently need sustainable solutions driven by data and entrepreneurs. To give our global ambitions feet and speed.
What are the right examples of combining sustainable solutions, data and entrepreneurs? And what support is available to help you? What are the roads for success? Join me during the Conference at the IndoDataWeek 2020 (www.indodataweek.com) on November 18. In my keynote presentation I will share what I have learned during my 30 years trip while working together with other entrepreneurs on the edge of innovations, business development and data science. And how we have translated this into an eductional program for both students and professionals.
Ronald Buijsse — ronald@buijsse.comh
Academic Director at the Jheronimus Academy of Data Science — a joint initiative of Eindhoven University of Technology and Tilburg University — the Netherlands
[1] www.linkedin.com/in/ronald-buijsse-586298/
[3] https://clubofrome.org/publications/
[5] http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Resources/Static/Products/Progress2015/English2015.pdf
[6] https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/globalsdreport/2015
[7] https://sdgpulse.unctad.org/
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaic_effect Already in 1839 the photovoltaic effect was discovered, in 1884 the first solar cell was developed in 1884
