Investors, national governments, international organizations, multinational corporations, and start-ups around the world see the vast opportunity offered by innovation and technology-driven growth.  Many have made significant investments of capital and creativity.

But in the energy and clean technology sectors, that great promise remains too often unrealized.  Failures big and small to turn good ideas into commercial success, or R&D outcomes into sectoral change, create a general sense that progress has stalled: that the current system for innovation-led growth is broken.  It is clear that resource constraints will one day require a more efficient world – and that there will be much value created by those who deliver that efficiency – but the road from here to there remains unfinished and full of hazards.

At C-Associates, we have the expertise, experience and ideas to change the dynamic, and have created and are engaged in businesses and projects to do exactly this. We are passionate about creating a dialogue around the required competences, such as cross industry systems thinking that seem to be lacking.  We are interested in addressing innovation failure in the area of resource efficiency, and want to share with you our ideas, because we believe there are solutions at hand. Our ideas are based on lessons learned first hand, and our approach is built on four pillars:

• Top-tier technical expertise to ensure firm scientific foundations
• Information return as a prerequisite for financial return
• Cross-boundary innovation – technical, industrial, and strategic
• Architectural thinking to find long-term, large-scale, sustainable success

We share our ideas to inspire you, make you think, ask the right questions and bridge the ingenuity gap: take the right decisions and turn innovation into growth.

Funding innovation effectively is hard. We see strategics suffering from institutional shortcomings such as a lack of cross-technology and cross-industry integration, multi-nationals inadvertently crushing their start-up partners, venture capital funds having a dismal decade, sovereign wealth funds redirecting their venture allocations from Californian brand names to benefit domestically, and government programs systems failing to generate sustainable employment and economic growth. This can be done much better. Information return on investment is the big brother of financial RoI. 

An architectural vision of the technology of which a start-up or new technology component forms a part, based on first principles, leads to a robust decision framework, from which follows deployment, commercial take-up and financial return.

More so now than before, and particularly in resource efficiency, technology components are part of integrated systems. Start-ups need to be able to access the vast know-how bases of large strategics, but should be isolated from the risk-averse cultures that suit large corporations well but strangle start-ups. Governments have the opportunity to play a great role here, creating the right playing field to foster true economic growth.

C-Associates have worked at the heart of these issues, and know what works and what does not. They know the cultures of Sovereigns, Strategics, Financials and Start-ups, where they clash and when. Because they have lived it. Before becoming part of C-associates they have worked for governments, large listed companies, management firms and start-ups. 

We aim to leverage our management and technology capacities, as well as our unique experience at the industry-startup-investor-government interfaces to help:
• Assess new resource efficiency related technologies against first principles
• Bridge culture divides between the different stakeholders by design 
• Facilitate global technology transfer
• Identify missing capacities in teams, projects and management firms
• Develop an architectural vision for technology deployment
• Build decision frameworks
• Leverage and optimise the cooperation between stakeholders in developing and developed economies

Our passion is with resource efficiency. Our interest is in alternative energy and ‘clean’ technologies, addressing resource security, efficiency and creating innovative systems from existing technologies in different industries.

We aim to inspire with our ideas, and can be a sounding board for government entities, corporations, financial investors and start-ups that need to work with each other. 

Some of you are looking for suggestions and inspiration to translate their ideas to plans. Often you are searching for ways to convert development into deployment.

If you are interested, join the discussion, or send us an email.