Large multinational corporations (MNCs) often spend millions of dollars in the research and development stages of technology that never make it to market. Whether the company doesn’t see the technology within its overall commercialization strategy, or simply doesn’t have it in its budget to continue pursuing its development, this has led to corporations halting further internal development of several innovative technologies with high levels of potential.
Innventure is a firm that focuses on founding, funding, operating, and rapidly scaling businesses through strategic collaboration with MNCs. They get involved with revolutionary technologies and guide the new company through its early and middle stages of growth until it can become a thriving company, and one of the leaders in its respective field.
This area is where Innventure thrives — acquiring and investing in technology developed by MNCs through strategic collaboration, forming them into companies with more than $1 billion in market value. Essentially, Innventure identifies the technologies that represent a source of untapped potential and brings the financial investment and business experience it takes to develop these technologies into successful companies in their own right.
The Innventure model
After an MNC decides it needs to shelve a valuable asset or find an alternative path to market, they may decide to collaborate with Innventure to see if it has the potential to become an Innventure company. If it does, Innventure invests in the company and places its skilled leadership team at the forefront of the business, allowing it to scale quickly and massively. This results in the creation of value for not only Innventure, but also the MNC and the new company that is formed.
For Bill Haskell, CEO of Innventure, determining what opportunities will become the next Innventure company comes down to the technology being disruptive and fulfilling a market need. “We look for innovative technologies that serve a massive market need,” Haskell explains. “In doing so, we know that whatever technology we invest in has a high probability of a significant level of demand because it addresses a deep need for the customer.”
Finding ventures that will be successful
Unlike other investment models, Innventure’s does not particularly resemble gambling with its money. Innventure’s model is designed to mitigate many of the risks inherent with typical startups. “It’s not gambling when you know how to pick the winning horse,” asserts Haskell.
Every prospective technology that Innventure considers becoming a future Innventure company is put through a vigorous vetting process they call DownSelect. The DownSelect process not only determines whether the technology works, but also pressure tests the commercial viability, exploring its market need and commercial prospects to ensure that it has a high potential for commercialization.
“Very few technologies make it through the DownSelect process,” says Haskell. “Just because a technology doesn’t make it through DownSelect doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea — it just isn’t a good fit for us. We are very selective with what we invest in because we can only invest in what we consider to be sure-fire successes — only the very best of the best.”
Developing sustainability technologies
Innventure has identified a substantial need in the market for sustainability technologies. The movement towards environmental consciousness over the past decade has caused several MNCs to invest in sustainability programs, but when faced with the decision of commercializing them, not all of the technologies that they have developed make the cut. The desire to really make a sustainability difference in the world, combined with not wanting to vertically integrate, can lead them to Innventure. Innventure has partnered with these corporations to develop these technologies further and scale their commercialization.
Some of the first technologies scaled by Innventure include PureCycle Technologies (PCT) and Aeroflexx, both of which were developed by Procter & Gamble who firmly believes in making sustainability solutions broadly available. PCT, in particular, is a huge success story for the firm. After launching the company and taking it to commercial viability, Innventure co-founder Mike Otworth is leaving his spot at the helm of PCT to return to Innventure as Executive Chairman.
Otworth’s experience at PCT exemplifies the extraordinary strengths of Innventure’s business model: together with an MNC, they find a need in the market, couple it with a disruptive technology that fulfills that need, and create a successful company out of it. With this model, Innventure has been able to launch several successful companies with more in the pipeline. But due to the collaboration of their MNC partners, they have also been able to advance technologies that will make a genuine difference in making the world a better place.
