New Florence. New Renaissance.

Shark Month: SAP.iO Foundries Sustainability Startups

I have said a few times that the arguments around renewable fuels – solar and wind in particular – have hijacked the Sustainability conversation. Lots of good has been delivered around Circular Economy thinking. The US EPA defines a circular economy as one which “reduces material use, redesigns materials to be less resource intensive, and recaptures “waste” as a resource to manufacture new materials and products.”

So, it was a fascinating journey in the last month talking to entrepreneurs, literally around the world, who are putting their heads down and showcasing plenty of success stories. My conversations with each are linked below.

• Ashley Etling of Limeloop talked about her reusable, smart packaging to help in today’s exploding eCommerce deliveries

• Giacomo Franchini of Italy based SupplHi presented on sustainability, sourcing and other elements of complex industrial B2B supply chains they support

• Carlos Oliveira of Chile based Algramo presented a different way to package and consume CPG products resulting in reduced plastic pollution, bite size economics and other benefits.

• Wilhelm Myrer of Norway based Empower talked about his blockchain tech to provide traceability and accountability for the circular economy. Norway, btw, is leading the world in circular economy thinking. 97% of their plastic bottles are recycled. Most other countries are barely at 10%. That is as impressive as the country's dominant performance in the recent Winter Olympics. 

• Matthew Wright of Specright presented on the huge payback from precise specifications in products, formulas and packaging

These conversations were facilitated by Kange Kaneene of SAP.iO Foundries. Her group represents SAP’s startup programs, including accelerators, that enable startups that can deliver value to SAP customers. Impressive in 4 years they have helped over 370 startups across 10 locations. All these startups were part of their Sustainability cohort. My conversation with her is here

Like I said – inspiring. Small firms, Big dreams, Tangible results that are helping the world.

Smart garage

The trial project is being led by U.K.-based Fetch.ai and Munich-based blockchain company Datarella and was just launched at one of the central Munich offices owned by Connex Buildings. The goal is to control the pricing and use of the building’s parking spaces dynamically, and to disincentivize people from driving to work by rewarding them with public transit passes for all the time they aren’t using the parking garage.

FastCompany

 

Blockchain at the ballot box

Utah County Clerk/Auditor Amelia Powers Gardner — one of Government Technology’s Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers of 2020 — told Fox News that Voatz has been “one of the most cost-effective initiatives” that she and her team have implemented since her election in January 2019.

“In true pioneer spirit, Utah County is honored to be the first place where a blockchain vote was cast in a presidential general election,” Gardner said. “We are proud to lead our state and the nation on this innovative and cutting-edge technology.”

Government Technology

In video below Amelia talks about other changes at the polls

 

The Libra cryptocurrency

The cryptocurrency, called Libra, will be a secure blockchain-based payment system backed by hard assets and designed for ordinary users, making it among the boldest efforts yet to bring digital currencies into the mainstream.

Facing continuing scrutiny of its privacy practices, Facebook introduced Libra in a manner that seemed intended in part to head off potential regulatory concerns. It said it is creating a subsidiary, called Calibra, that would be governed with the help of external partners, to ensure “the separation between social and financial data.” Calibra will offer a crypto wallet—a digital app that can be used to pay for items online and send money—using Libra.

WSJ

Here's a white paper on the concept

 

 

Blockchain with impact

Newsweek has an issue which highlights a wide range of blockchain applications. An example is Chronicled which is developing a blockchain based solution to supply chain management, recording all of the transactions that take place as pharmaceuticals travel from factory to container to shelf.

 

Another is Bitlumens which is focused on adoption of clean energy - video below

 

"Blockchain" farming

Your future chicken dinner is about to get its very own Fitbit-like device. Chinese online insurance company ZhongAn Online has developed a new GPS tracker for poultry called GoGo Chicken, according to the Wall Street Journal. The device fits around the animal’s leg while sensors monitor information like the chicken’s environment, what it eats, and how much exercise it gets.

ZhongAn refers to the product as “blockchain farming” because it utilizes the real-time public record technology popularized by cryptocurrency to store its data on the chickens.

The information GoGo Chicken collects isn’t just for those tending to the fowl. Consumers will be able to monitor the chicken’s day-to-day life via a mobile app as well.

Mashable

Photo Credit

 

 

More eye candy

Visual Capitalist does a nice job posting powerful visuals and data-driven content on an almost-daily basis.  Here is their best infographics of 2018 including one on the Business Value of the Blockchain.

The future of insurance

One of the most profitable in the world, the insurance industry exceeded $1.2 trillion in annual revenue since 2011 in the U.S. alone.

But risk is becoming predictable. And insurance is getting disrupted fast.

By 2025, we’ll be living in a trillion-sensor economy, projected to generate bronto-bytes (1000 trillion trillion) of data, as explained by TSensors Summit co-founder Janusz Bryzek. And as we enter a world where everything is measured all the time, we’ll start to transition from protecting against damages to preventing them in the first place.

But what happens to health insurance when Big Brother is always watching? Do rates go up when you sneak a cigarette? Do they go down when you eat your vegetables?

And what happens to auto insurance when most cars are autonomous? Or life insurance when the human lifespan doubles?

For that matter, what happens to insurance brokers when blockchain makes them irrelevant?

Read about in in Peter Diamandis’ blog post

Video below has another perspective on the industry

 

Blockchain in logistics

IBM and Danish shipping giant Maersk are teaming up to form a new company whose aim is to commercialize blockchain technology—the nifty, shared accounting ledgers first made famous by the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

The as-yet unnamed, New York-based venture is set to be owned 51% by Maersk and 49% by IBM, the companies said. The concern intends to help shippers, ports, customs offices, banks, and other stakeholders in global supply chains track freight as well as replace related paperwork with tamper-resistant digital records.

IBM and Maersk first partnered on a blockchain trial in summer 2016. Michael J. White, the new company’s CEO, said this pilot, which traced a container of flowers that sailed from Mombasa, Kenya to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, plus several followups convinced Maersk of the system’s potential.

Fortune

 

Blockchains and International Aid

Organizations working in international relief can lose up to 3.5% of each aid transaction to various fees and costs. What’s more, across the industry, an estimated 30% of all development funds don’t reach their intended recipients because of third-party theft or mismanagement. In Jordan, the WFP can use Building Blocks to audit each beneficiary’s spending in near-real time. And by paying vendors directly, Building Blocks has reduced money-management costs by 98%, according to Haddad. For an aid organization spending $6 billion annually across 80 countries, that adds up to tens of millions of dollars in savings. Bernhard Kowatsch, who heads the WFP’s Innovation Accelerator, which incubated Building Blocks, sees more value: “[Building Blocks] provides even higher assurance to individual donors that if you give to the World Food Programme, that money actually reaches the people it’s intended for.”

FastCompany