Lisa Smith, managing director of Btomorrow Ventures, the corporate venture capital (CVC) arm of tobacco company British American Tobacco (BAT), spoke about the importance of sustainable change in a keynote presentation at the 11th GCV Symposium today.
The bread and butter of a corporate venturer involves being a change agent that needs to find ways of persuading corporations to do something different, Smith said, whether it is in the form of an incremental change or a wholesale transformation.
For a company like BAT, that can mean pivoting away from its core product – which is not the most attractive to dynamic new entrepreneurs – and doing so quickly. Putting that argument forward credibly can make an initial cohort of entrepreneurs agree to collaborate, after which there will be momentum to attract more.
One Btomorrow Ventures project Smith cited was a battery-swapping programme for e-rickshaws in Bangladesh. They are used in last-mile delivery services but run into problems as they typically charge at night meaning off-grid solar power generation is not a viable power source.
There are five main things that corporate venturers can do to advance sustainability right away, Smith said. The first is building better business cases. For instance, the data already exists to show how harmful climate change is to economies and businesses, and highlighting the coming damage is important to get the ball rolling on solutions.
Making hero plays, such as bringing factories to net-zero emissions in a structured way, is also crucial, as is working collectively to eliminate parts of the supply chain such as pulp. It is ubiquitous in packaging, but half of the global supply comes from cutting down virgin forests.
Leveraging the power of a unit’s corporate parent is also important as their reach, credibility and speed can make a significant difference to sustainability initiatives around the world. Finally, lobbying governments is fundamental to achieving change, and something all actors can do.
