- Cytiva’s Innovation Accelerator program aims to source and scale in-house innovation.
- Six sustainability teams will get funding to pursue their ideas for up to one year.
July 7, 2020
Cytiva will invest USD 3.8 million in sustainability innovation through its associate-led Innovation Accelerator program. Six selected teams will get funds for up to one year to turn their concepts into commercial ventures that meet the challenges of the biopharmaceutical market.
Innovation Accelerator is a multi-challenge program that started in January 2020. The first challenge, called Planet Business, invited associates to create business opportunities with an environmental benefit or improvement. More than 1,300 associates submitted 125 proposals between January and February – six of which were shortlisted by a jury of experts. The finalists recently pitched their projects to an investor panel led by Cytiva’s President Emmanuel Ligner. All six teams secured funding to accelerate their ideas.
Emmanuel Abate, Head of Sustainability at Cytiva, and one of the panel, says: “The finalists presented compelling propositions with a strong potential to establish new industry standards. All ideas covered priority areas, where change needs to happen in the next years. We trust that investing in these concepts will help Cytiva achieve our sustainability goals.”
Now that the concepts have cleared this first hurdle, the teams will focus on making their ideas reality. The funded projects, which will be regularly evaluated, cover new ways to perform remote factory acceptance testing, improving manufacturing processes with regard to water use, chemicals, and additive manufacturing, transforming product packaging to be more sustainable, as well as alternative opportunities to work with single-use plastics.
Klas Marteleur, Principal Mechanical Engineer at Cytiva, and a member of one the teams, says: “The breadth of ideas shows our creativity in addressing environmental challenges. We are fortunate to get support from highly-skilled mentors throughout the entire innovation journey from prototype to, hopefully, commercial success.”
Sustainability is an area in which innovation can garner long-term value for customers and the industry. The Innovation Accelerator program continues with new challenges, which will roll out over the next months.