Operationalizing Sustainability

Note to all Contributors

Sustainability isn’t really a new topic!

Humanity has faced this concept for many years. Yet, so far, the scope covered by the term “sustainability” hasn’t been very wide, even if, in a sense, its “soul” was present. As an example, both within IBM and École des Mines, we used to present sustainability by introducing such names as “global quality” or “global optimization”, etc. This was done while conducting sustainability actions and sometimes without the measuring the actual range of our contribution, either at the social or ecological level. Could we possibly have these kinds of pioneers?

The answer is no. Actually, any evolution, even in advanced technological fields, is based on stepwise jumps, which may bear the names of mutation, self-organization or adaptation. Even when considering a paradigm change, the fundamental roots of evolution remain the same and any process remains but a process.

To reinforce our working baseline, experiences and assets within the sustainability subject matter, we have opted for grounding the proposed approach on examples, test cases, results and skills, all gained everywhere over several decades.

In preparing and launching this book (in twinned operations with its companion book Sustainability Calling [MAS 15b] during a sustained period of more than four years over 2011–2015), we strived to create the present original synthesis from the sum of information that we collected, with the view to elaborate a technology suited ...