When it comes to multinational corporations, business decisions are made with numerous factors taken into consideration. This sometimes leads to potentially valuable assets being shelved, even if they could have otherwise made for highly successful ventures. This is where the firm Innventure thrives — identifying and developing these shelved assets into businesses that take hold of the market in significant ways.
Innventure founds, funds, operates and rapidly scales large businesses in strategic partnership with multinational corporations (MNCs). By entering these businesses in the early growth stage and guiding them through their mid-stage growth, Innventure is helping to create the next big companies of tomorrow. In addition, their unique approach to founding and funding new companies mitigates many of the risks typically associated with building and scaling high-growth ventures.
Developing shelved assets from MNCs
Large multinational corporations will often make considerable investments in research and development for new technologies, only to shelve or abandon them because they don’t fit within the company’s long-term image or strategy. However, just because the technology doesn’t fit within the company’s plan for longevity doesn’t mean that it isn’t viable in its own right. This is where Innventure comes in — collaborating with these MNCs to scale them rapidly as high-growth ventures.
Innventure focuses on identifying disruptive technologies that fulfill a significant market need. This virtually ensures that any company Innventure decides to pursue will be successful, as there is a genuinely useful value proposition for the consumer. Unfortunately, the lack of this certainty has historically created much of the risk associated with traditional venture capitalist (VC) firms.
Identifying which assets are a fit for the Innventure model
Unlike traditional VCs, any prospective venture that Innventure vets goes through a rigorous, proprietary process they call DownSelect. In the DownSelect assessment, not only is the technology vetted to see whether or not it works, but its market need and commercial prospects are evaluated to ensure that it possesses a high potential for commercialization.
“Traditionally, people think that VC is all about high risk, high reward, but that simply isn’t the case,” explains Bill Haskell, CEO of Innventure. “With the Innventure model, there is minimal risk. Only the brightest technologies can make it through our DownSelect assessment, meaning that it is low risk, high reward. As we like to say, we always pick the winning horse.”
Innventure’s goal is to work with MNCs to help develop these high-potential technologies into companies with $1 billion or more in new enterprise value. By evolving technologies that were developed and later shelved by these MNCs, Innventure is partnering those corporations’ skilled development arms with their own expertise in founding and scaling new businesses to create a winning venture.
Innventure and sustainability technology
Currently, Innventure is focusing on funding and developing sustainability technologies because they see such an enormous market opportunity for these assets. Several MNCs have gotten into the early and middle stages of development in these technologies, only to scrap them for a
variety of applicable reasons. Innventure, however, seizes the opportunity to scale these technologies, such as PureCycle Technologies and Aeroflexx — both of which were shelved technologies from MNC conglomerate Procter & Gamble.
PureCycle Technologies (PCT) is a perfect example of why the Innventure model works. Based on polypropylene recycling technology, PCT was formed in 2015 by Innventure with serial entrepreneur and Innventure co-founder Mike Otworth at the helm. Now that Otworth has been able to scale the company significantly, he will return to Innventure as the company’s Executive Chairman.
“PCT’s technical readiness and excellent progress toward commercial operation in Ironton has been confirmed by a global engineering firm familiar with the project,” says Otworth. “Our progress makes us a leader in the polymer recycling space and reinforces that it’s the right time for me to return to Innventure. This is precisely what Innventure set out to do.”
Innventure will continue to identify new, exciting, and innovative sustainability technologies that are a perfect fit for their model. Determining which ventures will pay off with profitable results can be challenging. Still, thanks to the innovative DownSelect assessment, Innventure can guarantee that almost any venture they invest in will be successful. If one is looking to see what the next big sustainability technologies to emerge will be, look no further than the companies Innventure has become involved with.
