#DigitalRestart: the Alliance for Sustainability
Microsoft is a partner for open innovation and sustainable growth
The project is part of #DigitalRestart, a five-year investment plan announced in May by Microsoft which has allocated 1.5 billion dollars with the aim of supporting the economic relaunch of Italy, materializing in a strategic collaboration that includes companies, the academic world and startups in the manner of open innovation. The first companies involved are B4I (Bocconi for innovation), CDP (Cassa Depositi e Prestiti), Coop, Energy & Strategy MIP (Politecnico di Milano), FLOWE, growITup, Intesa Sanpaolo, Italgas and Snam. These are the words of Silvia Candiani, CEO of Microsoft Italy.We are proud to present the start of work on another important piece of our investment plan in the country, just five months after its launch. The growth and recovery of Italy must go from digital to sustainability and through this initiative we can make a concrete and systematic contribution to identifying a new green way for our future. The Alliance for Sustainability starts with a collaborative spirit between all the actors involved and among those who will join us in the coming months, because this is a challenge to be faced all together.
In the coming months, all the realities will have the opportunity to participate in a path led by growITup to define objectives and needs related to the theme of sustainability, also through collaboration with startups and involvement in hackathon. Three phases have been established for the roadmap.
Phase 1: mapping of market trends and gathering of needs by companies to then proceed with a design thinking activity. Phase 2: consolidation of the project lines that meet the needs highlighted in the previous phase and start of brainstorming sessions involving companies and startups in order to define initial concepts. Phase 3: identification of the startups for each concept, development of ideas, start of pilot projects. On this occasion, Microsoft presented for the first time in Italy a demo of its Sustainability Calculator, a tool that through artificial intelligence and analytics tools provides useful information for emissions and processing reporting activities, quantifying the environmental impact. A tool whose purpose is in line with the vision that will lead the group to become carbon negative by 2030.
