The energy transition will not succeed through ambition alone. It will succeed when companies turn decarbonisation into operational reality, while accepting responsibility for the people, skills and ecosystems that make long-term progress possible. A reflection on creating shared value through automation, regional talent and industrial leadership.
When I joined ABB Switzerland earlier this year, I faced a question that many industrial leaders are now asking with growing urgency: How do we create competitive advantage while contributing meaningfully to the energy transition?
Porter and Kramer’s idea of Creating Shared Value offers a strong starting point. In industrial automation, this principle is often visible in practice. When companies deploy technologies that reduce energy use, improve process stability and increase productivity, sustainability and performance do not have to compete. They can reinforce each other.
ABB’s automation portfolio offers concrete examples. Process optimisation in manufacturing can reduce waste, lowering both costs and carbon footprint. Digital energy management systems can help factories reduce consumption by 15 to 30 per cent. Predictive maintenance powered by AI can extend asset life and reduce downtime. Investments in employee skills and safe working conditions improve reliability and help reduce turnover.
None of this depends on sacrificing profitability. These are competitive solutions because they address what customers need most: lower costs, fewer disruptions and stronger compliance with environmental expectations. That is why automation matters so much in this phase of the transition.
However, leadership becomes most important where the shared value framework is incomplete. Automation creates value, yet it also changes work. There is no automatic mechanism that turns this shift into a socially balanced outcome.
That is why responsible leadership must go beyond alignment alone. We should pursue shared value wherever it genuinely exists. But we should also recognise obligations that strategy alone cannot fully justify.
For me, one important example is talent. The Baden region’s future depends not only on infrastructure and investment, but also on its ability to develop the people capable of designing, operating and improving the systems of the future. The ABB Technician School in Baden is a strong example of this broader responsibility: developing engineers and technicians not only for one company, but for an entire ecosystem.
This is also why BadenEnergy matters. As a co-founder, ABB supports a platform that brings together technology leaders, industrial operators, researchers, educators and emerging talent around shared challenges. In the energy transition, progress becomes sustainable when it is embedded in a strong local cluster.
My reflection is simple: The companies that will earn trust are not those that speak most loudly about purpose. They are those that show, through decisions, that performance and responsibility can move together. That is where leadership begins.
Hence the key question is:
Can industry move beyond shared value as a concept and build the cross-sector partnerships needed to make decarbonisation economically sustainable at scale?
