Achieving the sustainable development goals through net zero emissions: Innovation-driven strategies for transitioning from incremental to radical lean, green and digital technologies

Abstract

This work adopts a resource-based view for strategically managing firms’ tangible and intangible resources based on lean and green philosophies to explore the role of digital technologies in achieving NZE and the SDGs.This research outlines three contemporary issues. First, it assesses the theory-driven approaches and real-world datasets from conference of parties (COP) meetings. Second, adopting the VRIO (Valuable, Rare, Inimitable, Organized) framework, 25 identified digital technology-based values are obtained by digitalization-based integrated lean-green approaches that may enable manufacturing firms to pursue SDGs via net-zero emissions. Four scenarios of digital technology adoption and integration level of lean and green manufacturing pathways are proposed, differentiated by the degree of radical/ incremental interests in innovation and sustainable advantage types. Third, the study highlights that the achievement of NZE by SDGs may be possible only by adopting digital technologies and high-level integration of lean and green.