Delivering Disruptive Innovation: Experiences and Learning of a Cleantech Startup Rethinking Solar Energy

Speaker: Philip Hunt, CEO Orenko

The joint NanoDTC-Impulse-Maxwell Innovation Seminar Series has a series of brilliant speakers who are at different stages in their Innovation and Entrepreneurship journey. 

Innovation is critical to the modern world and is essential to humanity’s evolution and survival. It will be the linchpin in the race to tackle climate change and its real and serious consequences for life on earth. This seminar will look at the experience of Orenko, a Cambridge-based startup, that is innovating in the cleantech space by rethinking how to harness and convert solar energy to enable development of a new class of utility-scale solar plant for accelerating the global transition to zero carbon energy. Orenko’s CEO, Philip Hunt, will walk through the company’s journey by examining the steps it has taken, the processes the team has engaged in and the challenges they have encountered in conceiving and developing a new technology, and in raising capital for the technology. We will discuss the process of how to assess the viability of a new technology, how to sell innovative ideas and concepts to investors and partners, how to manage and deal with differing investor perspectives and profiles, and how to leverage existing technologies/methodologies to de-risk a new technology; finally, we will introduce an innovative methodology for quantifying the risks of developing a new technology for investors, and then discuss considerations on patent development and the global patent processes. The seminar will conclude with a short preview of the first public showing of Orenko’s new class of utility-scale solar technology.

Drinks reception to follow.