The HUB Summit 2021: Transformative Leadership for Sustainable Growth
‘An amazing day of dialogue, discussions and knowledge sharing between academia and our partners and members from business and government’, says Tor W. Andreassen, director of the research center Digital Innovation for Sustainable Growth.
On 4 November The Digital Transformation Hub@NHH (The Hub) hosted its first annual leadership summit: The HUB Summit 2021. The event was attended by close to 50 leaders from partners of Digital Innovation for Sustainable Growth (DIG) and The HUB members.
A common goal of sustainable value creation
The topics of the summit were sustainability, transformation and profitability.
Professor Tor W. Andreassen, director of DIG, was impressed by the presentations and the willingness to share both challenges and opportunities within the speakers’ respective organizations.
‘The quality of the content throughout the day was terrific, but what inspired me the most was the participants’ openness and willingness to share. By sharing the challenges and experiences we face on our journey toward a more sustainable future, we gain important insights from the other participants and can work on the solutions together, says Andreassen, and continues:
‘The summit was an amazing day of dialogue, discussions, and knowledge sharing between academia and our partners and members from business and government, to work towards the common goal of sustainable value creation in a digital era’.
Engagement to combat environmental degradation
The last session of the day was a Q&A session where students representing future leaders had the opportunity to challenge today’s leaders on the topics of sustainable value creation.
With a panel consisting of Helge Leiro Baastad (Gjensidige), Nina Riibe (Econa), Mona Skaret (The Norwegian Tax Administration), Bjørn Taale Sandberg (Telenor Research) and Ivar Horneland Kristensen (Virke, The Federation of Norwegian Enterprise), the discussion on how to achieve future sustainability goals ranged from incorporating sustainability into the core business, to operationalising the goals in the organisation.
Speaker and panellist at the summit, Bjørn Taale Sandberg, SVP and Head of Telenor Research, was encouraged by the commitment to work towards sustainability.
‘The HUB summit went as I expected when you bring together inspirational people and are exposed to insightful and relevant research. I was especially intrigued by a presentation on ecosystems and when these are superior value creators. Also reassuring to see the engagement at NHH and among participants to help combat environmental degradation’, says Sandberg.
Chairman of the board at DIG, Jørgen Taalesen, agrees.
‘With the summit, The HUB proved to be a unique arena to obtain state of the art research on topics related to sustainability and digital innovation, and for industries to be able to discuss the findings with the researchers themselves. This is exactly how we hoped DIG and The Hub would be and should be going onwards’, Taalesen concludes.
