Skip to Content

A guide to organizational positive impact, tech edition

Léon de Bakker
June 11, 2020

Why positive impact and technology are the way forward

This is a photo used by Benetton in an add campaign and it raises awareness for racial equality. This is an example of a company striving for a positive impact over 30 years ago. This is an  inspiration for this series on organizational positive impact, tech edition.
Photo by Oliviero Toscani/ commercial by Benetton Source

Reading time: 1 minute.

Our planet and society need our support to overcome pressing challenges. An increasing number of businesses acknowledges this and chooses to become and to stay a positive force for change. Technology can be helpful to achieve this ambition. In fact, I believe it is one of the key levers for change.

The 10 posts in this series deep dive into this instrumental role of technology and make up a guide to organizational positive impact and technology.

Companies are increasingly choosing positive impact

A company that wants to make a positive impact isn’t all that new. Take Benetton, for example. They launched, over 30 years ago, a series of advertisements that didn’t put their product front and center. Instead, they addressed societal issues such as inequality, racism, religious freedom and AIDS.

Fast forward to the present day and there seems to be an explosion of companies making big inspirational statements declaring to do good for planet and society.

Adopting to a new context

Why the sharp increase? Not to give away the ending, but it’s just sound business. Especially since we have been exposed to several large-scale events lately that have made us aware of how vulnerable our way of life is and how dependent we are on our planet.

Companies are as much impacted by those large-scale events as we are, as individuals. As a result, there is much more focus now on organizations’ positive impact, resilience and agility. Organizations that adapt to the new context and that contribute positively to a bigger purpose than just their bottom line will have a place to do business in the future.

10 posts on organizational positive impact and technology

I’ll post a series on organizational positive impact and technology. Each post will take around three minutes to read.

  1. A guide to organizational positive impact, tech edition
  2. Doing good drives profitability
  3. Major events and big statements
  4. Be consistent about your positive impact
  5. A strong purpose proposition requires agility and resilience
  6. Agility and organizational complexity, beware of the present
  7. How to create positive impact with technology? Foster critical thinking
  8. Technology as an accelerator for positive impact
  9. Assess how technology shapes your organizational positive impact
  10. Reframe technology’s purpose and strengthen organizational alignment

You’ll find my posts and more at SogetiLabs.

About the author

Lead Improvement Coach | Netherlands
Léon leads digital transformations with a core focus on future-proofing organizations and putting purpose into action. Aligning teams, business and IT across all layers of the organization and its key stakeholders with a wide lens and an open mindset. He studied business economics, has IT experience since 2001 and has supported organizations with their transformation journeys since 2003. Léon is passionate about all that is tech, new gadgets and visual design. Currently, Léon is working on connecting purpose and IT as key drivers for organizational change and exploring innovative ways to redefine and remeasure growth and success in a world in urgent need of more businesses moving positive impact front and center.

    Comments

    Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Slide to submit