Energy, raw materials, food and the places we live — that is where the next twenty years will be decided. They act on one another, and all four have to change. None of them works without people who know how.
Using energy more efficiently, and making sustainable ecosystems possible.
Energy is becoming more expensive, scarcer and cleaner all at once. That calls not only for different sources, but above all for using less of what we have. Our companies help organisations see where energy leaks away — in vehicle fleets, in trips that never needed making, in processes that could be leaner. What you don't measure, you can't improve.
Who works on this: Yeshugo · Flow
Using scarce resources more sparingly. Often by using less, not more.
This may be where we have the most to say. Most companies become sustainable by adding something; we more often find the gain in leaving things out. Yeshugo connects vehicles without fitting a single telematics box — sparing thousands of devices that would otherwise become electronic waste. Flow makes sure a shipment goes right the first time. Less waste, less hardware, better use of what already exists.
Who works on this: Yeshugo · Flow
Producing food more sustainably, with less water and less loss.
More food has to come from less land, with less water and without exhausting the soil. That only works if growers know what is happening underground. Sensoterra measures soil moisture at root level, in more than forty countries. That delivers water savings, but also higher yields and crops that cope better with a dry summer.
Who works on this: Sensoterra
Designing cities and landscapes for heat, drought and heavy rain. Holding water where it falls.
The climate is changing faster than the way our land is laid out. Cities get too hot, soils too dry, and when heavy rain comes the water has nowhere to go. Climate-proofing starts with knowing what the soil is doing. ConnectedGreen, part of Sensoterra, measures exactly that for municipalities and land managers: where planting is running dry, where the soil holds water, and where irrigation simply isn't needed.
Who works on this: Sensoterra, through ConnectedGreen
The foundation. Without skilled people, nothing happens.
Every transition eventually runs into the same wall: people who have to be able to do the work. We need engineers who install heat pumps, drivers learning to go electric, growers working with data, and organisations that can unlock their own knowledge instead of losing it. Knowledge, then, is not a transition alongside the others. It is the ground all four stand on.
Who works on this: Dation Groep · GoCurioo
There is more than one way to contribute to a transition. A breakthrough contributes. A small change, repeated often enough, contributes just as much. We look for both, and we do not ask an initiative to be revolutionary before it is worth building. The question is whether it genuinely contributes, and whether it can grow.
Much of the change depends on adoption: on the hundreds of thousands of organisations that would have to work differently and have no time, money or reason to. That is where repetition does the work. One sensor saying irrigation is not needed amounts to nothing; the same sensor in more than forty countries is water policy. One vehicle read out without a box is nothing; two thousand organisations without boxes is a mountain of electronic waste that never comes into being. One training provider getting its administration in order does not solve the shortage of skilled people; hundreds of providers and thousands of instructors together supply the people every transition needs. And one shipment arriving intact saves nothing; millions of shipments that never have to be sent twice save fuel, glass and journeys.
And the two run into each other. What starts as a practical improvement can become categorical at scale: two thousand organisations reading out their fleets without a box make an entire business model — selling, fitting and servicing boxes — unnecessary. Enough repetition changes a market.
Being profitable is part of it. Not out of greed, but because an initiative that needs a subsidy stops when the subsidy stops. What makes money funds what comes next. That is how room appears for initiatives that would otherwise never have existed.
There is a fifth: the socio-economic transition. Broad prosperity, a fair distribution of costs and benefits, capital shifting towards what is sustainable. You don't solve that with a product — it takes policy and ownership. We build for these four, and for the foundation beneath them.
They work in different markets, with different customers and different technology. But at heart they do the same thing: they make something visible that was invisible before, and therefore easier to do well.
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