Green Six Sigma

Chapter 6The Digital Revolution and Climate Change

‘Whether you like it or not we are now in a digitally interconnected world.’

– Barak Obama

6.1. Introduction

Nicholas Negroponte (1995) predicted over three decades ago: ‘Like a force of nature the digital age cannot be denied or stopped. It has four very powerful qualities that will result in ultimate triumph: decentralizing, globalizing, harmonizing and empowering.’ The digital revolution is definitely here to stay, and we can safely say that each generation will become more digitally competent than the preceding one. It is reinventing business models, reshaping economic sectors as well as changing societal infrastructures. Big Data and Artificial Intelligence along with several other technological developments are now fundamentally altering the ways in which economies work and how we live our lives. Perhaps surprisingly, this movement to digital technologies is also envisaged to play a significant role in the planet's ecosystem along with climate change.

The focus of information and communication technology within organisations has shifted dramatically over the last forty years, moving from improving the efficiency of business processes within companies to enhancing the effectiveness of the value chain reaching suppliers, customers and consumers. During the 1960s and 1970s, businesses focused on the use of mainframes to process large quantities of data. In the 1980s and early 1990s organisations concentrated instead ...