By Rick Brenner, Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer — Innventure
With the environmental revolution in full swing, there is a plethora of breakthrough technologies being developed every day in the sustainability sector. Inevitably, this means that many of the technologies we’ve been assessing since our inception are environmentally focused, making sustainability a key value proposition of our business and the new Innventure Companies we create. An important value component of creating and scaling disruptive companies is understanding how the technology addresses material ESG-related issues. In fact, our technology and business opportunity screening platform, called DownSelect®, incorporates ESG as a heavily weighted value metric in our assessment of whether an opportunity is worthy of becoming a new Innventure Company.
Innventure believes that in order to build a highly disruptive business that is widely adopted by the marketplace, it not only has to make money for its customers, but it must also provide a net positive sustainability benefit to achieve end customer adoption and drive value. Hence, Innventure strives to incorporate such value metrics into its process to find technologies that have the potential to drive growth, reduce waste, and build B2B franchises that deliver superior results and returns.
A 2021 EY report entitled “How to create long-term value through sustainability” 1 highlighted a couple of key findings:
1. Integrating ESG considerations as part of company decision-making often leads to operational and process efficiencies within the business, thereby helping to improve profitability.
2. The increasing influence of environmental and social factors on consumers’ purchasing decisions has also allowed sustainable companies to charge higher price premiums on their products and services, commanding a greater share of wallet of existing customers.
At Innventure, we have screened over 100 potentially disruptive technologies in our 7-year history. Of those, we have started 3 Innventure Companies - PureCycle in 2015 (Nasdaq: PCT), AeroFlexx in 2018, and Accelsius in 2022. All three companies have the potential to be environmental game changers that drive rapid adoption and pricing premiums that come with protectable sustainability market advantage.
- PCT market cap is $1B and aims to revolutionize the virgin plastic resin business.
- AeroFlexx is a liquid packaging innovation designed to reduce virgin plastic by up to 85%, reduce shipping costs, reduce nonvalue -added packaging - all while delivering a superior consumer user experience versus bottles and caps.
- Accelsius, our latest Innventure Company, is designed to change the way data centers and other microprocessor packed environments manage the ever-increasing heat generated from growing computing power demands.
So, for us, sustainability is in our DNA, not just because it is good for the planet and its inhabitants, but because it is a key component in creating disruptive $1Bhigh value enterprises that will stand the test of time.