The climate change and environmental degradation call for quick and impactful actions. European commission has heard the call and launched the Green Deal, an action that aims at transforming EU into a pioneering climate-neutral continent. The Green Deal leads Europe to be a resource-efficient economy with no net emissions of greenhouse gases by the year 2050. Already by 2030, the greenhouse gas emissions should be 55% lower than 1990 levels, says the action.

Digitality has been identified as maybe the most important factor advancing the goals of the Green Deal: digitalisation decreases greenhouse emissions and makes us more resource-efficient. However, as such, it also serves other aims, and thus, is not subsidiary to the Green Deal. Indeed, we are experiencing two fundamental transitions at once: Green and digital transition – often referred to as the Twin Transition.

Applied research provides solutions to challenges of Twin Transition

Twin Transition changes the fundaments of many aspects of everyday life. It offers opportunities to innovate, to streamline ways of working, to develop sustainable services, to create new business models, to establish social enterprises – just to name a few possibilities. Twin Transition has the capacity to transform Europe to be greener as well as more inclusive and competitive.

However, there are bridges that need to be crossed to reach the success in Twin Transition. We need to identify societal, organizational and individual challenges related to implementation of new solutions. In addition, we need to recognize new competencies related to adoption of new ways of doing things and we need to make sure that these competences are adopted by all concerned. At the moment the skill shortage is a significant brake to successful implementation of Twin Transition.

Overall, we need to evaluate the impact of changes from different perspectives to ensure the welfare of citizens and future generations. As the change is fundamental, it carries many interdependencies with it and needs to be evaluated and supported from many perspectives. Applied research provides tools to do this.

Haaga-Helia Business Innovation Conference summons applied research in Twin Transition

Applied research is at the core of Haaga-Helia University of Applied Science. Our research provides solutions to challenges that Twin Transition provokes. In addition, Haaga-Helia Business Innovation Conference (HHBIC2022) brings together researchers from all over the world to discuss the opportunities, challenges, preconditions, achievements and learnings related to green and digital transitions on November 24, 2022.

The scientific committee of the conference has identified four distinct areas of development and research that reflect Haaga-Helia’s research profile and are particularly interesting in respect of reaching the goals of Twin Transition.

As the Twin Transition is manifold, these four aspects are by far not sufficient to ensure the success of transitions, but we believe that finding solutions to these four aspects would help the Twin Transition to take crucial steps forward. Next, I will shortly describe the themes. Please note that the descriptions are not complete as all four thematic areas are vast.

1. New Digital Services and Technologies: We think it is crucially important to gain strong empirical research evidence on adoption of digital technologies to education, business, and services as well as on the prerequisites for doing it successfully. We also call for research on how to support enterprises or public bodies in their path to digitalise functions or services, or to utilize AI or machine learning. In addition, it is important to study skills and attitudes that citizens and employees need in order to adopt new technologies.
2. Sustainable Service Design: Sustainability has many dimensions and can be defined as compassing environmental, cultural, economic, political, legal, technological and social dimensions. More applied research is needed to fully understand how service design can help to serve the purposes of Twin Transition. For example, case examples enrich our understanding.
3. Pedagogical Design in a Digital Environment: Digitality has the potential to change the way we learn but success does not happen if we don´t understand the requirements of digital learning and digital learning environments. More research is needed on how to design digital learning environments, modules, curricula, or learning processes. In addition, assessment and creating enthusiasm and shared identity in digital learning environment needs to be studied in greater detail. As the skills gap in competencies related to Twin Transition is significant, it is particularly important to ensure that digital pedagogy supports learning.
4. Digitality and Sustainability Creating Business Value: Digitality and sustainability may be the key components of business success in the future. How can businesses benefit from utilizing digitality or sustainability? Are there any case studies showing how enterprises have successfully developed their business models in line with Twin Transition – for example, case studies on firms that have developed their business models to utilize circular economy? How do startups or SMEs view demands of Twin Transition? What kind of skills would they benefit from when developing their future business models – and how do they acquire these skills?

Join the discussion

On November 24th we will gather to discuss the aforementioned four thematic areas related to Twin transition together. We invite all academics interested in these topics to join this discussion.

In addition, we are willing to hear other themes that academics studying Twin Transition from different perspectives consider relevant to the Twin Transition. Discussion themes are chosen based on extended abstracts. The call for extended abstracts is open until April 19th, 2022.

Please submit your own proposal and participate in forces accelerating the Twin Transition – for the benefit of our planet Earth.

Further information:

• Digital action = Climate action: 8 ideas to accelerate the twin transition. 2021. Digital Europe.
• EU initiatives in support of the green and digital twin transition. YouTube

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