Miguel Mascarenhas and Emilio Roos, CEOs of Bioinsight and ECOA Ambiental respectively, talked on our podcast about their global perspectives on issues that were highlighted by media such as Forbes, The Economist or Harvard Business Review.
First issue selected was mentioned by The Economist where the need to face climate crisis and a reality check was done. Miguel and Emilio presented their view on this topic and how they see the world can move forward.
We have to start to see in the world's driving economies concrete evidence that paths are being traced towards balanced sustainability and not paths based on continuous unbalanced growth with damage to the environment and to the economy itself.
After that, it was mentioned that the Council of Foreign Relations refers that Latin America is expected to affirm itself in 2022 as a renewable energy power. Emilio and Miguel commented on the challenges and risks they see for renewable energy projects not only in Latin America by worldwide.
Renewable energies are key elements for decarbonization, but like any activity it generates impacts and that is why we must plan and anticipate those impacts and we currently have the means and tools to do so.
There is also the opportunity for the development of these projects to bring new ways of looking at economic models. These economic models, in addition to meeting the requirements of shareholders, also respond to the requirements of society and the environment. Translating, a given project, in addition to generating profit, can contribute to helping to solve local societal and environmental problems
The third topic discussed was the changes on the organizations we have witnessed in the last years. Forbes, for example, mentions, organization have become more agile, horizontal, authentic and with a purpose. Miguel and Emilio presented their vision on how they see the future of organizations and how it impacts BE.
Many of these concepts mentioned by Forbes are part of the genesis of Grupo BE. Forbes even mentions cooperation between companies as a growing trend, which was the motto for BE's first steps in 2016.
Following the theme of organization and human resources, the Harvard Business Review mentions the various changes that have occurred and are expected to occur at the work level (home office, talent retention, satisfaction indexes, etc).
There is no denying that as social beings the last 2 years were hard because they pushed us away and didn't allow contact. But we made the most of the situation and adapted. At BE level, the teams were already used to working remotely (Portugal-Brazil) since 2016, so no major changes were necessary. Another opportunity was the inclusion of professionals from other geographies who, with the beginning of the pandemic, prepared to work remotely and thus integrate teams like BE.
As for the future, much remains to be decided, but it is predicted that it will go through a mixed scenario. In addition to what will be defined at a regulatory and legal level, BE will seek to find the scenario that works best for individual employees, for the team as a whole and for customers.
The last topic discussed was Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Big data and how these themes can revolutionize sectors and organizations. Specially what will be the role of the machine and the people in the future of the societies.
As an organization we need to accelerate the incorporation these tools. These are fundamental tools for data processing but also for managing large amounts of data that are available today.
Looking at the environmental assessment process, we can see that the advantages of promoting the use of machine learning and big data, for example, will contribute to a faster and more complete processes during the technical phase of EIA. However, it will always be necessary to count on human input at the decision stage. Complex, multi-criteria and context decisions will, most likely, always require human input. Obviously, this decision phase will be all the better the better the previous phase of technical contributions.