AAA October 2014 – Page 8

Profile: GDF Suez New Ventures

GDF Suez New Ventures, the corporate venturing arm of France-based energy company GDF Suez, is looking to invest in energy  efficiency and storage to reflect changes  in the energy sector that have made traditional models less profitable, according to Giovanni Ravina, an investment manager at the unit.GDF Suez launched the €100m ($125m) fund in May this year, following the lead of… Continue reading Profile: GDF Suez New Ventures

News focus: BP uses venturing as a route to innovation

In a keynote speech at the Global Corporate Venturing Symposium, Issam Dairanieh, managing director of BP Ventures, explained how the unit was created out of the decision its parent company made to focus more heavily on alternative energy.Subsequently founded in 2007, BP Ventures operated as part of plans for BP to spend $8bn over the course of… Continue reading News focus: BP uses venturing as a route to innovation

A rosy outlook: France

France has been reworking its university commercialisation efforts from the ground up in recent years. The 2011 investissements d’avenir (future investments) initiative has allocated €3.45bn ($4.46bn) to research commercialisation at public laboratories, public research institutes and public universities. The initiative has led to the creation of the sociétés d’accélération du transfert technologique (Satts), which are receiving… Continue reading A rosy outlook: France

A rosy outlook: Germany

University research commercialisation in Germany is still a recent development. It began in 1975, when Ruhr University Bochum set up the country’s first tech transfer office, Unikontakt. It was another two decades before the institution formalised the arrangement and set up a limited company, Rubitec, in 1998.Tech transfer in Germany has lacked a national strategy such as… Continue reading A rosy outlook: Germany