Ainoha Cejudo: “We have an obligation to fight against climate change. If companies don’t act, citizens will struggle to do it”
04 de December de 2019
04 de December de 2019
EAE organized a new session of the Innovation Meetings with Utopicus in Barcelona, which focused on current topics such as CSR and protecting the planet.
Ainhoa Cejudo, the ICT Innovation & Strategy Head of Digital Challenge at Suez headed a new session of EAE’s Innovation Meetings in Barcelona. In 2015, the international group Suez acquired Agbar, a company specializing in integral water cycle management (operating since 1975 and originating from the company Aigües de Barcelona). Agbar is a public-private company that owns 70% of Aigües de Barcelona, offering all integral water cycle services in the city’s Metropolitan area.
To give an overview of the innovation projects run within the group, Ainhoa Cejudo, the ICT Innovation & Strategy Head of Digital Challenge at Suez, explained the foundations that define the culture of a modern company a new session of EAE Business School’s Innovation Meetings.
Ainhoa Cejudo discussed the Terranova project being run by Synectic, the group’s technological company in Spain. “It is our response to the need for change, our transformation vehicle for capitalizing on new technological paradigms and implementing them to generate value in the integral water and waste cycle”, she explained.
The initiative is based on three key pillars: networked talent, thanks to new more open, participative and transparent organizations that foster agility, efficiency and collaborative work; technological innovation, through the implementation of disruptive technologies; and new governance models, with the introduction of methodologies such as Agile, DevOps, Design Thinking and Kanban. The project benefits from Suez’s co-creation and technological innovation space in Spain for the efficient management of the integral water and waste cycle. As a result, Terranova won an award in the Digital Adopter category in the third of a competition run by Accenture and the newspaper El Economista.
In this new business culture, the ICT Innovation & Strategy Head of Digital Challenge at Suez, explained that employees have to be proactive and never resistant to change, emphasizing that the culture is an organization’s base and value, “and this is strengthened by taking care of employees”. She also discussed the idea that the new teams in a company have to foster creativity, critical spirit and adaptability to a changing reality in an increasingly agile way, adding value to all the group’s activities. “To achieve this, we always have to keep learning”.
Turning to the new methodologies used at the company, the professional emphasized that managers always have to dynamize, facilitate and help the group to ensure that everything happens effectively. “We fight for our employees’ wellbeing and take care of it”, she added.
Ainhoa Cejudo went on to explain that the company often organizes themed events focusing on a single technology for employees, as well as sessions designed to raise children’s awareness of sustainability issues. In fact, according to Ainhoa, Suez has set a series of sustainable development goals aligned with the company’s values. “We are running more and more initiatives focusing on a topic: health, sustainability, femininity”. The company aims to reduce the CO2 emissions generated by its processes by 75%, among other actions.
The Head of Digital Change Innovation at Suez emphasized that, unless people change their habits, things will get worse in terms of the planet’s sustainability. “We are increasingly going to see extreme temperatures”. As such, in her opinion, “as a large, international company, we have a responsibility and an obligation to obligation to fight against climate change, because if companies don’t act, citizens will struggle to do it”.