Tecnología e innovación para un futuro más sostenible: el reto de las empresas

* A conversation named "Innovación inteligente: El futuro ya se está construyendo" occurred at the Belleza con Innovación Sostenible event in Peru.
* Participants included Eduardo Gotuzzo (CEO of L’Oréal Groupe for Central America and Andean Region), Pedro White (CEO of Mercado Libre Perú), and Isabella D’Angelo (Corporate Sustainability Manager at Intercorp Retail).
* Bruno Ortiz Bisso moderated the conversation.
* Isabella D’Angelo stated that innovating in sustainability means rethinking existing processes, actions, and operations rather than creating new things from scratch.
* Innovating in sustainability involves integrating sustainability into the business model by examining resource procurement, distribution, and operations.
* Eduardo Gotuzzo stated that rethinking requires strategic priorities within the business, focusing on impacts as team objectives with concrete action plans.
* Pedro White discussed the concept of community, noting Mercado Libre works to generate commercial and financial democracy for communities facing low monetization, low connectivity, high informality, and limited credit access.
* The beauty industry faces the challenge of integrating sustainability into its processes, products, and strategies through science and technology.
* L’Oréal Groupe has 22 research centers and over 4,000 R&I professionals, incorporating AI and data to transform consumer experience.
* L’Oréal Group works with IMPACT+ to measure the environmental footprint of digital advertising and uses AI to optimize campaigns and reduce waste.
* L’Oréal Groupe is founded in 1909 by Eugène Schueller and has over 88,000 global employees.
* The L’Oréal-UNESCO “Para las Mujeres en la Ciencia” regional award will be presented on October 14, 2026.

The exchange illuminates a tension between abstract concepts of innovation and concrete operational realities in achieving sustainability goals. D’Angelo's emphasis on "rethinking" existing processes suggests that the barrier to sustainable change is often organizational inertia rather than a lack of viable solutions. Gotuzzo’s pivot toward strategic prioritization and team objectives bridges this gap by suggesting that true impact requires aligning internal decision-making structures with external environmental considerations. White’s inclusion of community highlights that technological or corporate innovation must be framed within broader socio-economic equity concerns—addressing issues like access and informal economies—suggesting sustainability cannot be purely an internal operational metric but must address systemic barriers.
The integration of technology, as seen in L'Oréal's use of AI for R&I and advertising optimization, provides a powerful mechanism to execute these large-scale re-evaluations. However, the pattern emerging is that technological solutions (AI, footprint measurement) are being applied to solve value generation and social equity problems simultaneously. This suggests a necessary shift from viewing sustainability as an add-on to viewing it as the fundamental architecture of how value—both economic and social—is constructed. The implication for agency lies in recognizing that shifting focus requires not just technological tools, but a philosophical commitment to embedding interconnectedness across all stakeholder relationships.
Bridge questions: How can organizations effectively translate high-level strategic goals into measurable, localized operational changes across diverse global or national operations? What frameworks are necessary to ensure that community-focused innovations (like those discussed by Mercado Libre) are integrated seamlessly with product and supply chain sustainability metrics in a cohesive manner? What is the long-term systemic shift required for stakeholders to prioritize collective well-being over purely immediate, measurable financial returns?