We’re three years into the UN’s “Decade of Action.” Nearly a third of the way into an ambitious 10-year sprint to transform the world and deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Seven years into the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2050.
We’re past the point of empty promises. It’s time to rise to the challenge of combatting climate change and accelerating sustainable solutions. It’s time to walk the talk.
At Dassault Systèmes, we’re deeply committed to enacting and accelerating sustainable change – not only for ourselves, but for our customers and the industries we serve. This commitment manifests in many ways – from solutions like Lifecycle Assessment to the Sustainability Compass that guides us.
“We know that when it comes to our sustainability values, we can only reach our goals and live up to our mission if we walk the talk,” said Philippine de T’Serclaes, Chief Sustainability Officer here at 3DS. “Through innovative software Dassault Systemes has the opportunity to create new solutions to tackle sustainability challenges and accelerate the change leveraging the expertise of our professionals in varying domains to help our customers become leaders in the transition.”
Another way we walk the talk: our LEAP for Sustainability challenge, an internal innovation challenge designed to accelerate the power of our solutions to enable sustainable change in the industries we serve.
The inaugural LEAP for Sustainability challenged began in May 2021 to tap into the collective intelligence of 3DS employees to generate innovative solutions that could be integrated into the 3DEXPERIENCE portfolio and be marketed to customers. Among the 2021 finalists were a solution for digitizing upcycling batteries and one for sustainable land management in the mining industry.
In 2022, we kicked off the challenge’s second year by offering the Climate Fresk workshop to nearly 1,200 3DS employees in 45 global offices. Thanks to a partnership with the Geckosphere organization, employees in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific were able to participate in the workshops, which offer unique approach to understanding the origins and implications of climate change.
“We strive to empower all of our colleagues to hone their knowledge and take action on our shared climate challenges within their professional and personal scopes,” said de T’Serclaes. “Providing trainings such as the Climate Fresk allows us as a company to continue walking the talk, ensuring we remain knowledgeable on climate challenges as a collective and continue to incorporate sustainability values into our products as well as our operations.”
Employees dug it. They felt challenged, educated and inspired. Couple that with the LEAP for Sustainability challenge and you’ve got motivated and empowered 3DS employees looking to deliver sustainable innovations around the world.
What is Climate Fresk?
The Climate Fresk promise is “Understand climate change in 3 hours.” How does it work? The workshops seek to enable individuals and organizations to have open conversations about climate solutions.
Antoine Rabain, founder of Geckosphere and the chief Climate Fresk facilitator for 3DS, said the Climate Fresk workshop is unique because it’s adapted for the audience and engages both sides of the brain.
“The Climate Fresk can be adapted to the unique situations of different audiences within a single company,” Rabain said. “It offers different perspectives: reinforcing team cohesion around an existing decarbonization plan; contributing to the definition of such a plan by identifying actions contributing to the reduction of the company’s greenhouse gas emissions; exploring different projections of the company’s economic model in a low-carbon world, and, finally, formulating new offers in order to mitigate the company’s scope 3 emissions through its customers or suppliers.”
LEAP x Climate Fresk
3DS naturally focused discussions in the final part of the workshop on creating new, sustainable offers that are naturally built around tools already used by the company. The various workshops generated 190 proposals out of post-Climate Fresk brainstorming sessions. Thanks to the LEAP for Sustainability Challenge, Dassault Systèmes is uniquely equipped to follow through on those ideas.
“The concentration of ideas that emerge following a high-volume deployment is a systematic challenge for organizers, and their digitization is a relevant and even critical solution for international projects,” Rabain said. “This was the case here, and Dassault Systèmes already had the appropriate tools internally for this, which is not the case for the majority of companies I have met over the last 3 years in this type of project.”
Sustainability and corporate social responsibility
In 2023, there are no shortage of companies investing in sustainability. The motivations are many: environmental concerns, pressure from customers or shareholders, fear of the consequences or hope of capitalizing on a trend. But, make no mistake, the heat is on. Companies can’t afford to turn a blind eye to the challenges of climate change and the need to decarbonize their activities and sectors.
“In order to align themselves with trajectories as ambitious as those of the Paris Agreement, they will all have to carry out a more or less radical transformation of their existing activities, develop new professions and offers, and some will have to define the conditions of their abnegation,” Rabain said. “To achieve this, several strategic levers will be used depending on the profile of the organizations and their sectors, between reorganizations, acquisitions, interruptions … and innovations.”
For Dassault Systèmes, coupling Climate Fresk with the LEAP for Sustainability challenge is a way to include employees all over the world in a shared sustainability initiative and inspire changes that will have ripple effects that impact the business and beyond.
“Thanks to the Climate Fresk, we have been able to reach and train over a thousand of our colleagues on the causes and stakes of climate change,” said de T’Serclaes. “With this increased shared awareness and sensibility, we are further able to embark our stakeholders in our ambitious sustainability objectives.”
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Patrick Ball Patrick is a Senior Communications Manager on the Corporate Publishing team here at Dassault Systèmes. An experienced journalist, marketer, speechwriter and storyteller, Patrick's words have appeared on pages and stages around the world.