- The first conference was given by Concha Iglesias, leading partner of Sustainability & Climate at Deloitte Spain, with the title “ESG: strategic lever of competitiveness”.
A Coruña, March 8, 2024.- The Auditorium of the University of A Coruña hosted yesterday at 7:30 p.m. the first conference of the “In Open Code” cycle corresponding to the current 2023/2024 academic year, organized by the Inditex-UDC Chair in Sustainability.
The Rector of the UDC, Ricardo Cao, inaugurated the event, which was also attended by the president of the UDC Social Council, Antonio Abril Abadín; the director of the Inditex-UDC Chair, Marta Rey García; and the director of Sustainability at Inditex, Javier Losada.
This first presentation was given by Concha Iglesias, leading partner of Sustainability & Climate at Deloitte Spain, under the title “ESG: strategic lever of competitiveness”. The expert began her talk by addressing the creation of shared value, which consists of the responsibility of organizations to go beyond satisfying the needs of their customers to link economic and social progress through their business model. In this way, she defended that “the transformation process necessary to integrate environmental, social and governance variables and, thus, ensure the financial profitability of the business system, requires defining and executing a shared value strategy”.
Iglesias assured that, to do this, “it is essential to promote holistic changes in the system, through collaboration between sectors, industries and regions; the search for a positive contribution to society; investment in technological solutions and open innovation; and the development of responsible actions to protect the environment, aligned with the principles of the circular economy.”
She also reviewed the regulatory agenda implemented during the last decade at the level of climate and pollution, supply chain, financing and reporting, which “must be understood as a lever for driving and measuring the strategy, and which seeks to respond in a comprehensive and global way to the challenges that arise,” according to the expert.
Creation of shared value from the University
The rector of the UDC, Ricardo Cao, insisted on the importance of social and sustainability values when designing a strategy by the corporate government of a company that allows it to maximize its profitability. “At the UDC we understand that sustainability, social aspects and governance must be the result of participatory processes that allow the entire university community to be deeply involved in their achievement. For example, from the point of view of mathematical models aimed at improving the profitability of a company, optimization algorithms with constraints are of great help for decision-making, some of which are marked by business or market conditions, but others obey social and sustainability values. This will be one of the lines of work of the Chair of Artificial Intelligence in Green Algorithms with funding from the Ministry for Digital Transformation and the Public Service, recently granted, and which also has funds provided by the company Inditex”, he pointed out.
The president of the UDC Social Council, Antonio Abril Abadín, stressed during his speech that the real application of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) criteria in the strategic and business plans of companies and organizations is key to their resilience and competitiveness. In this regard, he recalled the importance and scope of the Inditex-UDC Chair for the promotion of sustainability and university social innovation within the academic institution of A Coruña. “This university-business collaboration initiative, the result of the agreement signed in 2010 between Inditex and the UDC, has become a national benchmark for public-private cooperation, and has marked the way forward in the field of sustainability and social innovation of public and private institutions,” he noted.
For her part, the director of the Inditex-UDC Chair in Sustainability, Marta Rey, highlighted that “from the chair we explain how sustainable behavior and alignment with ESG criteria of organizations favors their competitiveness, and we transmit this approach from an academic perspective through the Expert Course in Sustainability and Social Innovation, in whose current edition Deloitte has been incorporated as an academic partner.”
“In Open Code”, an initiative of the Inditex-UDC Chair in Sustainability
The “In Open Code” Conference Series is promoted by the Inditex-UDC Chair of Sustainability. The relationship between the University of A Coruña and Inditex led to the creation of the chair more than a decade ago, as a result of the collaboration agreement signed by both entities to promote university social responsibility in 2010. The coordination of this initiative is in charge of the UDC Social Council, as the body for society’s participation in the university.
This university-business chair, a pioneer among Spanish universities, was the first step towards the creation of a much broader collaboration program between Inditex and the UDC, which today includes the InTalent Program, for the international recruitment of excellent researchers, created in 2016, and the Inditex-UDC Predoctoral Fellowship Program, created in 2013.
Photo 1: From left to right, Inditex’s Sustainability Director, Javier Losada; UDC’s Rector, Ricardo Cao; Deloitte Spain’s Sustainability & Climate Lead Partner, Concha Iglesias; UDC’s Social Council President, Antonio Abril Abadín; and the director of the Inditex-UDC Chair, Marta Rey García.
Photo 2: The first conference of the “In Open Code” Cycle, corresponding to the current 2023/22024 academic year, organized by the Inditex-UDC Chair in Sustainability.
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