Leadership Series: Spotlight on u-blox

Digital Declaration Leadership Series: Spotlight on u-blox

The Digital Declaration report ‘Navigating the era of responsible business leadership in today’s world’ showcases how the Digital Declaration signatories are turning their aspirations into concrete actions and how technology can foster an inclusive, trusted and innovative digital society for all.

This series of interviews highlights individual leaders sharing their insights and perspectives around trust, inclusion and innovation in the digital age.

U-BLOX: AN EXPONENTIAL CONTRIBUTION TO A SUSTAINABLE WORLD

In conversation with Thomas Seiler, CEO, u-blox

u-blox’s core business is to create connectivity and positioning products and services for the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem. What does sustainability mean for you, and what are the highlights of your recent annual sustainability report?

To ensure our connected future is a sustainable one, we develop wireless products, solutions, and services that make no compromises on security, safety, and integrity. Sustainability at u-blox means doing business responsibly with integrity, looking after our employees and respecting each other, treading lightly on the environment, contributing to the communities that host us and ensuring our supply chain partners do likewise. Our signing of the GSMA’s Digital Declaration emphasizes our commitment to providing trustworthy digital ecosystems that make people’s lives easier, safer, and better. Our customers and their partners entrust us with personal and sensitive data. We take our responsibility to protect it extremely seriously. To protect our customers – and theirs – against the many and varied threats their devices and data face in the connected world, it is our responsibility to create secure products. To ensure our products are equipped with lifetime security, we build on an industry-hardened root of trust hosted in a secure element right inside our modules. We provide end-to-end security and secure cloud connectivity, all fully tailored to the needs of the IoT. Dedicated services ensure that security is maintained over the lifetime of the product.

The IoT is poised to make an exponential contribution to a more sustainable world. As a member of this critical ecosystem, u‑blox has a key role in the innovation driving sustainability across it and a responsibility to produce our products and services sustainably. In 2012 u-blox became a signatory of the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative – the UN Global Compact. Alongside the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, the Compact sets out 10 principles on how signatories should conduct their business. These principles cover human rights, labour, the environment, and anti-corruption, and they feed into every aspect of our business, both strategically and operationally.

Sustainability has always been at the heart of what we do, and now we are going further. Our Sustainability Strategy is currently delivering on five key goals; create sustainable products, do business the right way, protect the environment, respect our people, and improve STEM education.

In alignment with the GSMA’s Digital Declaration goal to ensure everyone can participate in the digital economy as it develops, u-blox engages with communities around the world to improve STEM education. We believe such initiatives are the solution to recruiting more women in technical roles and are broadening our engagement with young students to demonstrate the myriad of future career possibilities in STEM.

As part of your Sustainability Strategy, you share your key goals and commit to reporting back on your progress against them in future Sustainability Reports. Why is this important?

Benchmarking and communicating our achievements transparently as they relate to our environmental, social, and governance goals periodically is important for u-blox as a company and all our stakeholders. It is important because it helps us measure our progress and deliver on our sustainability goals across our various ecosystems. The introduction of our annual Sustainability Report is another essential milestone within our Sustainability Strategy to help us further engage in a meaningful way with our partners, customers, investors, and the communities we live and work in, among other stakeholders.

How do your connectivity enabling products and services support your stakeholders in becoming more sustainable?

Our positioning and connectivity products and services transform the way we all live, work, travel, and play and make a significant contribution to a more sustainable future. The connected industries we enable are safer and more efficient. Connected cities, underpinned by our products and services, reduce energy consumption and improve quality of life. Connected healthcare can save lives. Connected vehicles make our roads safer and reduce emissions. Connected business means less need for travel – the importance of which has never been greater. Connected people of all ages and capabilities; children with long-term illnesses or the elderly living alone are happier, safer, and experience a higher quality of life when they are no longer isolated and can participate in school, family, social or other activities through the IoT.

We see sustainability as iterative at u-blox with responsible business as our bedrock. We endeavour to continually discover new ways we can be better corporate citizens while fortifying an inclusive, trusted, and innovative digital society for all.

Learn more: https://www.u-blox.com/en/its-exponential-our-sustainability-potential