BETTER BUSINESS BETTER WORLD

Photo credit: Livelihoods Funds / Hellio Vaningen
future in the strategic choices they make today are more likely to thrive.
The world will still face many challenges in 2030. There will still be intense
competition over resources; corruption won’t have disappeared; the environment
will still face risks; and social justice will likely be a major issue worldwide. But a
world that has been pursuing the Global Goals will be better organised to address
these challenges. More capital will be deployed in sustainable infrastructure. More
innovation will be directed at environmentally stable solutions. Women will have
gained much greater economic and social power and the benefits of trade will be
more evenly spread, helping to strengthen further international cooperation.
Board executives don’t have to choose this vision. But consider the alternatives. Over
the next 15 years, like it or not, sustainability will become as big and disruptive in
every sector as digital technologies have become over the past 15. Moreover, over the
next 15 years, these two disruptive forces will increasingly converge. The majority of
businesses successfully targeting sustainable market opportunities today are built on
digital technologies (see Section 3.2). And digital industry groups and policymakers
are collaborating already to see how and where digital technologies can speed
progress towards the Global Goals and to develop enabling policy. In many sectors,
this collaboration is likely to be a powerful driver of rapid change. In the energy
sector, the combination of technical innovation, much of it digital, and long-term
enabling regulation is making clean power and energy efficiency credible, rapidly
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