Road mapping is an executive decision-making tool and also facilitation tool, and it can be even applied to sustainability challenges. We see road mapping methodology used in various forms, not only for executive decision making, but also for driving corporate transformation. We also find road mapping is heavily used for collaboration across multiple stakeholders within an organization, as well as without. When it is within an organization, it would be applied across departments to collaborate, to work on a collaborative strategic vision together. We use road maps for defining organizational transformation in companies, and it has a simple five to six stage process. The first stage would be definition of the vision, by multiple stakeholders within the company itself. The second stage would be defining the business opportunity, again by the multiple stakeholders, as a shared business objective. The third stage would be definition of what the ideal performance levels would be expected within an organization, in terms of its desired goals. The fourth stage would be looking at how the gap exists as it is right now in comparison to the expected outcome in the future. The fifth stage would be defining targets along the way to reach the desired performance levels. And the sixth stage would be the execution, where the organization would move along achieving the defined targets in the objective that is aiming to reach the performance levels that is the desired outcome in the future. The whole idea of using transformation maps, road maps for companies itself, it's heavily, could be, driven around sustainability too, where an organization would look at its evolution along a sustainability path as a dynamic revolving and evolving process. We use green transformation road maps as a systemic tool to define how a company can walk through changing itself to become more green over time. It would involve various steps of defining what the business innovation promise is, what the emerging trends in technology are, how areas of acceleration are necessary for various innovation priorities, and how the business priorities need to align with the technological means and needs at that given point in time. We use green transformation maps to facilitate the step by step process of a company to become green. It would involve various steps at the top level where we would define the vision of the company looking at five to ten years ahead. The second level would be defining the sustainability requirements that are imposed on the company. The third layer would be how the business promise is embedded in those challenges, as well as expected outcomes in the near future. The fourth level would be how technological means are available in terms of R&D and innovation to meet those challenges. The fifth level would be how the processes that are linked with those technological innovations could be defined within the organization. And the sixth level would be how the resource allocation in terms of finance and human resources could be developed. A company could also very well define how over time it would be prioritizing various green product, green innovation, and green process needs, as well as green workforce development needs, and could choose to prioritize among them. All these road mapping exercises would be done within the entire organization with various departments collaborating together and having a hand shake on the road map that they collectively defined and they commit to deliver in the future. That would allow them to have a clear cut idea how the green transformation process could be realized. Sustainability challenges are great, greater than we can think of, greater than we could imagine in 1985. Our companies have grown larger, our economies are more complex, our societies have bigger challenges than thirty years ago, and we're looking out to incremental and massive amount of technological change that is ahead and still yet to come at a higher pace. That all requires a massive effort in systems level change, and today the scholars are talking about heavily around systems level change around collective action as the fourth wave that will drive the industries and the evolution of our society. Systems level change is easier said than done, and it is quite challenging when you are trying to make multiple stakeholders align and collaborate. To address these challenges and to facilitate a smoother transition, United Nations recently developed sustainable development goals as a set of seventeen major goals that all the multiple stakeholders would need to align to address the sustainability challenges of the societies at large. Especially Sustainability Development Goal seventeen aims at facilitating multiple stakeholder partnerships for sustainability. It is one of the most critical ones because it cuts across all the sixteen other goals, to intervene in each goal to bring multiple stakeholder partnerships as a means to deliver change for sustainability. As we said, it is easier said than done. There has to be mechanisms at various levels in organizational hierarchies in organizations, meaning the companies. The countries have to be prepared to undertake such collaborations, and various other multiple stakeholders, NGOs, and the society at large would need to have the flexibility to align for such complex partnerships. However, the UN SDG-17 does give a big promise to deliver systems level change for climate change, for sustainability at the society in the large scale. So what will happen when we are transitioning to sustainability? We can really pin them down to various simple steps. We will see technological change driving sustainability, critically and importantly delivering the change in businesses, the change in product definitions, change in services. Number two, we will see organizational norms having to change rapidly, become more flexible, agile, and, depending on the needs of the region or the business, taking different forms. Number three, we will see collaborations becoming critically important across multiple stakeholders to drive the change. Rather than competition, collaboration will be the key word. Number four, we will see equitable workforce development having more and more importance all around the world to bring justice and equality of labor and division of wealth across the nations. For transitioning to sustainability, that shows us how UN SDGs are critically important to make that change happen, at least by providing a framework that many people, many organizations could align around. We will see sustainability becoming seamlessly embedded in the way we live in the near future. We will see equitable workforce development around sustainability all around the world, where green would be the key essence of delivering services and products. We will become, in a way, very green that we won’t have to talk about sustainability any more. It will be the part of our daily lives. It will be the way we live, the way we think, the way we take action, regardless of having to talk about sustainability much. So, we will be talking less, but we will be doing more. It will be already embedded in our actions.
