More and more Dutch companies want to be climate neutral by 2030 at the latest, but the number of organizations that have no climate ambitions is also growing this century. This is evident from the Dutch Innovation Monitor 2021 of the University of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences.
55 percent of the companies that were surveyed indicate that they want to be climate neutral by 2030 at the latest. That is 7 percent more than the year before. But the number of organizations that do not want to reduce their ecological footprint or only want to reduce their ecological footprint after this century also increased: 22 percent in 2021 compared to 13 percent in 2020.
According to Professor Henk Volberda, who led the research among 600 companies, these results show that the climate ambition of the Dutch business community is polarizing.
laggards
The laggards are generally companies that have had a hard time in the corona crisis, says Volberda in the NOS Radio 1 News. “They are mainly concerned with survival, and they are deferring the necessary investments to achieve negligible emissions to the long term.”
The number of frontrunners, who want to be climate neutral by 2030, has also increased. These are companies that innovate and think a lot about the long term, says Volberda. “You would hope for a swan-stick effect, that the laggards will also take over. But that does mean that you have to make investments, and that you don’t have to work on short-term profitability.”
Digital innovation
The research also shows that Dutch companies have clearly started to invest more in innovation, especially in digital innovation. Volberda: “The digital transformation that many companies started last year – sometimes forcibly – continues. New digital channels were set up and completely digital companies were launched.”
According to the researcher, there are concerns that this transformation is being hindered by lagging digital skills. Managers from the logistics and financial sector in particular are concerned that some of their staff will not have the digital skills they will need in 2025.
New products and new customers
In addition, Dutch companies are much more involved in finding new products and services aimed at new customers or markets. Innovation to improve products for existing customers and markets also increased.
This has therefore not been at the expense of innovation in new products. The analysis also shows that innovative companies are getting through the corona crisis better.
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