Tuesday 7 December 2021

‘A boom in innovation’ to create a sustainable future

“A boom in innovation” is what Katie Mills, Head of Sustainable Development and Innovation UK&I at Schneider Electric, believes is needed within the energy sector to truly “harness the capabilities that are out there” concerning data.

We spoke with her not only on successes and failures at COP26 but also what Schneider is doing with small businesses and its partners to tackle sustainability and create a greener future.

“A lot of the start-ups we’re working with in the UK and Ireland, we have commercial deals with – and we’re either partnering with them for access to systems, platforms, data or we go together to market and we co-sell, which is another great way for start-ups to bring additional funding into the business.

Ms Mills spoke on the difficulty surrounding culture in blending a large corporate company with a small start-up: “[Culture] is the toughest – a start-up needs to go at 100mph pretty much all day, everyday and a large corporate is like ultimately trying to turn the titanic most of the time. We’re determined to be quick at moving on things although sometimes we think we are but probably not to the speed that a start-up wants.”

She believes setting expectations with smaller companies and transparency in how quickly things can happen is the key to a fruitful relationship.

“That’s where innovation teams have a role to play,” she argued – “they have a role to take in an innovation, move quicker in the early stages, figure out that there is a strategic fit for the wider business before you start to integrate things, where they are a lot slower.”

Learn more on what she had to say and the work Schneider Electric do by watching the full interview here.