In episode six of the Ascent podcast, Andrew Tarvin speaks with Vanessa Liu, Vice President of SAP.iO Foundries North America. They discuss topics including diversity and inclusion in the start-up community, habits of successful entrepreneurs, and Vanessa’s experience working with founders at SAP’s accelerator. Andrew and Vanessa also discuss thoughts on their outlook for 2021 and the changing nature of the start-up community.
Josephine Monberg interviews Tobias Buxhoidt, Founder and CEO at parcelLab and Max Kissel, Founder and CEO at Soley.
Josephine Monberg interviews Mark Osborn, Global VP of Strategy & Operations, Consumer Products IBU at SAP and Nathan Anderson, CEO and Co-Founder of Scantrust about SAP’s Industry Cloud in the Consumer Products Industry.
Dr. Garry Copper, neuroscientist turned sustainability technologist and circularity advocate had a pivotal moment – that our field is one-noted and we need to build a reuse bridge to capture value left in materials to transition to a sustainable world, a fly-wheel of wealth for communities who have been left out in the linear economy. Led by curiosity and studying how people remember and forget, he stumbled on CE, and his life was changed forever. He is the CEO of a Chicago-based technology start-up Rheaply that helps manage material flows and the life cycle of assets in the circular economy through reuse, realizing the 4.5 trillion dollar opportunity.
I met Garry a few months back at a Green Biz event and had chills after hearing him evangelize how the “circular economy can only be realized when it’s real for everyone, and everyone can participate. Materials flow everywhere.” I was blown away as he described his purpose “to make his story not remarkable,” empowering more people and particularly women of color to participate and not just be a passive stakeholder in making our communities sustainable. Rheaply is a part of Circular-City Chicago in tri-sector partnerships including local non-profit community champions. We pull on the threads of digital divide and food sovereignty, and hydroponic farming in Chicago too.
The future is bright. In Episode 45, he explores his journey as someone who wants to make an impact, and a black man in an almost exclusively white environment for most of his career. His dream for Rheaply is to operationalizing a net-zero waste strategy and help businesses be efficient in a COVID world by reducing holding and carrying costs, capturing material value and leveraging spend avoidance. However, we diverge and in a provocative discussion to explore the business case “let’s keep our marketplace on Earth” (not to be missed)!
As we unpack the business model emergency for circularity, the big question emerged…has COVID accelerated or decelerated climate and sustainability transition? We talk about recent weather disruptions and fires in California, and the burning question is “can you do business when folks can’t go outside?” The Earth is the business case. It’s not climate change, it’s a climate emergency. We also talk about doing the right thing particularly when it comes to social responsibility in forced child labor and the black lives matter movement. Do either of these pressing social issues really “need” a business case or is this a space to step up and be good stewards in business?
One of Rheaply’s key partners is SAP and Rheaply is currently in the SAP.iO Foundry. Big shout out to John Licata at SAP.iO. Garry explores his journey as a start up founder with lessons earned for other technologists. Also shout out to John Holm, a friend of Supply Chain Revolution from Pyxera Global, and a Circular Cities-Chicago advocate. Also, shout out to Harold Chapman for all the work you do to feed and teach the students in Chicago that there is sustainable way to live, eat, and learn.
Cogniac is a company that uses convolutional neural networks to quickly and painlessly automate visual inspection tasks in all kinds of scenarios.
I invited Cogniac CEO Chuck Myers, and Cogniac CTO and co-founder Bill Kish to come on the podcast to tell me more, and we had a fascinating conversation where I learned how their solution is being used in scenarios as diverse as railroads, automotive companies, and timber yards.
To learn how supply chain leaders improve end-to-end supply chain visibility, download the research study of 1,000 COO’s and Chief Supply Chain Officers – “Surviving and Thriving How Supply Chain Leaders minimize risk and maximize opportunities”
We live on a planet of finite resources so it makes a lot of sense to make the maximum possible use of all the resources we have. This is the fundamental tenet underlying the Circular Economy (which we have talked about previously on this podcast), and it is also the principle that Rheaply is building a platform to address.
Rheaply is a startup working with the SAP.io foundry in New York and they have developed a platform to allow organisations maximise use of their assets, saving money in the process, and avoiding unnecessarily sending items to landfill.
Rheaply’s Chief of Staff, and Head of Sustainability to joined the podcast to come on the podcast and explain how Rheaply works.
I’m a big fan of 3D Printing, and have been ever since seeing the Replicator on Star Trek! So, when I heard that one of the Ivaldi, one of the startup companies in the SAP.io New York Foundry was in the 3D Printing space, I was very keen to chat with them.
Espen Sivertsen, the CEO of Ivaldi, graciously agreed to come on the show and we had a fantastic chat about how Ivaldi is helping organisations digitise their inventory (and we got to hear from his 3 year old daughter!).
If you have any comments/suggestions or questions for the podcast – feel free to leave me a voice message over on my SpeakPipe page or just send it to me as a direct message on Twitter/LinkedIn. Audio messages will get played (unless you specifically ask me not to).
To learn how supply chain leaders improve end-to-end supply chain visibility, download the research study of 1,000 COO’s and Chief Supply Chain Officers – “Surviving and Thriving How Supply Chain Leaders minimize risk and maximize opportunities”.
While adapting an agile supply chain, increasing conversion rates, reducing wastes, including decreasing returns are front of mind, 1 company is transforming virtual shopping, where the online shopping experience is made human, again. Meet HERO (usehero.com).
Imagine a world where supply chains are flipped upside down, a world where we send files, not parts? A world that empowers the end consumer to produce what is needed on-demand through cloud based technology, including recycling on site in a circular transition?
I recently chatted with CEO of Ivaldi Group, Espen Sivertsen, to talk about the future of digital supply chains using digital distribution, on-demand additive manufacturing, industrial sustainability, and the power of diversity in technology. Espen is currently part of the SAP.iO Foundry bootcamp and shares observations he’s gathered from Silicon Valley and beyond, that diversity fuels innovation (read that again). The segments Ivaldi serves in digital distribution include maritime, industrial, mining, energy (gas turbines and power plants), and automotive.
Alexa Gorman ist seit 1999 bei SAP und arbeitet dort seit Jahren eng mit Startups zusammen. Ihre Sicht auf das Startup-Ökosystem in Deutschland, den Ansatz von SAP, der „Next Partner Generation“ und welche Gedanken sich Corporates machen sollten, um erfolgreich mit Startups zusammenarbeiten, hört ihr in diesem Podcast.
In this episode, we chat with a startup founder in SAP.iO Foundry Munich’s Spring 2020 cohort. Nemanja Popovic, CEO of StorifyMe, explains how his company helps businesses engage on social media, shares insights on content technology trends, and tells us about his experiences going from corporate developer to innovation entrepreneur.
