Key concepts:
Sustainability: a multidimensional imperative
The concept of “sustainability” is both a process and a goal, and encompasses three main pillars:
- Environmental: Preserving natural ecosystems for future generations.
- Social: Respecting societal aspirations for well-being, equity, and justice.
- Economic: Responsible optimization of resources for sustainable profitability.
Digitalization: a strategic transformation
Digitalization creates access to large databases and increased interconnection between products, services, and organizations, promoting innovation in the supply of products and services. However, it raises questions about its social and environmental impacts, thereby calling into question its sustainability.
Digitainability: balancing digitalization and sustainability
The concept of “digitainability” was first developed in a 2020 publication in the journal Sustainability1 and was defined as the combination of digitalization and sustainability in business strategies.
In the agricultural and agri-food sector, digital technologies are seen as a solution for achieving sustainability goals, particularly those set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)2 defined by the United Nations in 2015 and aimed at being achieved by 2030.
The crucial role of open innovation and startups
Open innovation, characterized by partnerships and collaborations between companies, and more specifically with startups, thanks to their agility, is particularly conducive to developing innovations focused on socially responsible behavior and sustainable products. These two organizational dynamics play an important role and are interdependent.
Servitization: towards a new economic model
Servitization involves moving from an approach focused on product marketing to one focused on combining personalized products and services that meet the economic, social, and environmental criteria of their customers.
At the cost of substantial investment, it appears to offer opportunities for profitable long-term investment and strengthens the competitiveness of companies, in particular by promoting more interactive and interdependent relationships with their customers.
Interview with Isabelle Piot-Leptit:
How does your work fit into the CoEDiTAg targeted project?
The CoEDiTAg project is organized into four areas of work that study different aspects of the development of Digital Equipment and Technologies (EDiTs) and the greening of production models in the agricultural and agri-food sector. This article is part of area 1, which studies the changes in industrial organization involved in (or resulting from) the development of EDiTs.
The aim of this area of work is to study how players in the agricultural and agri-food industry integrate into the general industrial ecosystem. Two structures are studied in particular: startups and platforms (whether or not they focus on agricultural and agri-food activities, as long as they can be mobilized by the agricultural and agri-food sector).
How do you link the conclusions of your article to the situation of the French agricultural and agri-food industry?
Today, sustainable and digital innovations are strongly driven by startups or small platforms because they develop more naturally with a dual vision (sustainable/digital) from the outset.
As for the larger players or platforms, we are seeing investments in digital technology based on sustainable guidelines or, conversely, a search for sustainability to be brought into line with pre-existing digital solutions.
Small players are closely watched by larger ones, both for the purchase/acquisition of innovative ideas and for partnerships and collaborations. It is therefore a very dynamic landscape, as we can see at any given moment a multitude of small structures, which can quickly disappear following takeovers by larger structures, which may have helped them to develop in their early stages.
Will this French ecosystem gradually shift towards a model dominated by large players?
It is too early to answer this question, even though, from a technical standpoint, platforms and companies need to grow in order to remain profitable, particularly if they are focused on a single activity. However, we are now seeing startups that are not only developing a productive activity, but also a social activity, which challenges this principle of profitability linked to size, with a rethought principle of profitability linked to the quality of services that more precisely meet customer needs.
This represents a fundamental change that is fairly recent and can be traced back to the 2010s, when small platforms grew significantly. As they offer very specific, high-quality services, they tend to organize themselves into networks (platform of platforms/system of systems) in order to continue to grow while maintaining a high level of service quality. Each entity will then guarantee specific expertise within a larger whole, which will enable them to maintain their position. This model is fairly new and is beginning to prove effective.
What do you see as the next steps, the next areas to explore as a priority in this field?
This article really focused on the relationships between startups and large companies and all the open innovation challenges that this generates. Next, it will be important to study the concept of quality, which is fundamental in service. Today, thanks to digital technology, it is possible to sell no physical products or to sell physical products under the guise of a service. Michelin is a good example of this. This company rents its tires to farmers for their various machines and maintains them. Through a subscription to this service, the service provider takes care of the tires in an optimal way, thanks to digital data collected by sensors that detect different needs. Thus, the sale is not based on the physical product, but on the service.
This is a development made possible by digital technology, as it requires the capture and transmission of data in near real time. Transactions are no longer based on the physical object; the object becomes the vehicle for the service and therefore for the transaction.
This phenomenon has become very important over the last five years, so it is something to keep an eye on. It tends to establish relationship systems based on cooperation, whose viability is ensured by the quality of the service, which depends on digital tools, in order to free up time for the customer, whether a farmer or other, who can then invest more heavily in their core business and in turn provide quality services.
How do you see the results in this area being applied to the agricultural and agri-food system in the coming years?
The biggest change envisaged is that we generally talk about value chains and production chains, and this traditional view is ultimately very linear. With these platforms of platforms and the multiple relationships that a startup can have with several large companies, we are moving towards an ecosystem made up of value networks. This is already in place among transporters, who work in networks to save time thanks to multi-partnerships that allow them to secure delivery times by changing service providers during transport if necessary.
Deployments are no longer really done as before with a producer, a processor, a carrier, a distributor, etc. This represents a major challenge for the agricultural and agri-food sector because a high level of transparency is required for their products, and it is becoming necessary to set up a complex traceability system for all players in the networks, but this is now facilitated by digital tools that are already in place or under development.
This vision and network organization represents a significant evolution, and also a challenge, both economically and technologically.
Article reference:
Isabelle Piot-Lepetit. Digitainability and open innovation: how they change innovation processes and strategies in the agrifood sector?. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2023, 7 (1267346), pp.1-9. 10.3389/fsufs.2023.1267346. hal-04317295
HAL Id:hal-04317295 : https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-04317295
- Gupta, S., Motlagh, M., and Rhyner, J. (2020). The digitalization sustainability matrix: a participatory research tool for investigating digitainability. Sustainability 12:9283. doi: 10.3390/su12219283
- https://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals
