Disruptive Innovation Examples

As a communicator, I love reading about climate solutions. Over the weekend I learned about Teto Verde Favela - a nonprofit that teaches residents in Brazil's favelas how to build a green roof to cool their homes without overloading electrical grids or paying to run fans. Typically, green rooftops are heavy and expensive, requiring layers for soil, insulation, and drainage. But a collaboration with a civil engineer produced a safe and affordable solution - bidim a lightweight polyester geotextile made of recycled drink bottles that allows plants to grow without soil. Now green roofs are seen all over - people's homes, bus stops, moto taxi shelters. The benefits are far reaching, beyond cooling they dampen noise pollution, improve building energy efficiency, prevent flooding by reducing storm water runoff, and ease anxiety. Climate solutions are out there and we should talk about them! This is a great example of an innovation that is both practical and affordable. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/eSqhqTgk via NPR #UrbanGreening #CommunityGarden #UrbanWilding #BeatTheHeat

Why do energy terms sound like scary German monsters? 😱 First, it was Energiewende—the dramatic “energy transition.” Now, it’s Dunkelflaute—dark doldrums when, for a few consecutive days, the wind dies, the sun hides, and energy grids struggle to cope with demand. In 2024, #Dunkelflaute hit Germany hard: wholesale electricity prices soared to €1,000/MWh, coal plants sprang back to life, and energy imports became a lifeline. For #climatetech startups, this daunting term presents a significant business opportunity. Every founder should consider whether their solution could help tackle this challenge and change the narrative to capture this opportunity. Here are a few opportunity fields for startups: 1. Long-Duration Energy Storage (LDES): This is naturally the obvious one, and many companies are already working on solutions (e.g., hydrogen, flow batteries, and thermal storage). What's interesting here is that a solution like Reverion (biogas to electricity and back to hydrogen/methane) can fit this challenge, even though it wasn't on the company's radar when it was founded or part of our investment thesis. 2. Grid Flexibility Solutions: Balancing supply and demand is critical during Dunkelflaute periods. Startups can develop AI-powered demand response systems or virtual power plants that aggregate distributed energy resources, especially cross-border solutions as the topic becomes highly political. 3. Predictive Analytics for Weather and Energy Markets: Dunkelflaute events can be forecasted with greater precision. Startups offering real-time grid analytics and weather forecasting tools can help utilities and industries plan ahead. 4. Hybrid Renewable Systems: If you can't solve the macro, offer a solution to the end user. Pairing wind, solar, and other sources with storage creates local resilience for commercial and residential customers. Solving Dunkelflaute isn't just about energy and geopolitical stability; it's about unlocking a significant business opportunity for climate tech startups. Let's break the doldrums together! What’s your take on tackling Dunkelflaute? Share your thoughts! #venturecapital #energytransition #renewables  

Could shifting to renewable solutions be the most profitable move your company ever makes? ➤ As with the dawn of the internet, the shift to renewable energy is transforming industries and creating vast opportunities. Initially, the internet was met with skepticism and uncertainty, yet it became a catalyst for innovation and profit. Today, the climate crisis is sparking a similar wave of change, and forward-thinking companies are seizing this moment to innovate and thrive. ➤ Take Cruz Foam, for example. This innovative company is turning the waste from shrimp shells into biodegradable packing materials. Unlike traditional foam, which is derived from oil and lingers for eternity, Cruz Foam’s solution is sustainable and environmentally friendly. After use, it can be broken down to nourish plants, completing a full circle of sustainability. ➤ Why embrace this shift? 📌 Profitability: As demand for sustainable solutions grows, so do the profits for companies that deliver them. 📌 Innovation: Renewable solutions offer a chance to solve market problems creatively, setting companies apart as leaders in their field. 📌 Sustainability: By adopting new systems, we can significantly reduce our environmental impact while meeting consumer demands. → The message is clear: we cannot simply reduce our way out of the climate crisis. We must innovate and build new systems that offer fresh opportunities for growth and sustainability. If companies like Cruz Foam can lead the way, so can you. Let’s turn the ratchet in the other direction and embrace the profitable possibilities of renewable innovation. 💬 What renewable innovations have caught your attention, and how can they transform our industries? → Share your thoughts and let's explore the future together! #Renewables #Innovation #Sustainability #Profitability #ClimateAction #CircularEconomy

🟥🔴🟧🟠🟨🟡🟩🟢🟦🔵🟪🟣🟫🟤⬛⚫⬜⚪🟥 An analysis of the non-life insurance market in India for FY 2024-25 (YTD Jan). 1️⃣Industry Overview: Total Industry Premium: ₹230,202 Cr Overall Growth: 9% 2️⃣Insurer Categories and Growth Rates: General Insurers: 6.67% growth Stand-alone Health Insurers: 17.76% growth Specialised Insurers: 2.45% growth 3️⃣Key Market Drivers 💠Health Insurance Boom Rising lifestyle diseases, post-pandemic awareness, and government push (e.g., Ayushman Bharat) will keep health insurance demand high. Insurers may introduce AI-driven health underwriting and telemedicine-based policies. 💠Digital & Insurtech Disruption The growth of online insurance aggregators (e.g., PolicyBazaar) and app-based insurance models will disrupt traditional sales. AI, Big Data, and Blockchain will improve underwriting, fraud detection, and claim settlements. More “usage-based” and “micro-insurance” models will emerge, especially for millennials and gig workers. 💠Motor & EV Insurance Growth With India targeting EV adoption (30% by 2030), EV insurance demand will surge. Usage-based motor insurance (UBI), where premiums depend on driving behavior (via IoT devices), will become mainstream. Traditional motor insurers like ICICI Lombard, Bajaj Allianz, and Tata AIG will dominate, but digital-first players (e.g., Go Digit) will challenge them. 💠Agriculture & Climate-Related Policies Climate change risks (floods, droughts, cyclones) will drive agriculture and catastrophe insurance adoption. Parametric insurance models (payouts based on weather events) will gain popularity. Government-backed agriculture schemes will support moderate but steady growth in this segment. 4️⃣ New Approach ✅ Digital-First Approach More insurers will invest in AI, ML, and blockchain for underwriting and claims. "Instant policy issuance" and "AI-powered chatbots" will become standard. ✅ Hyper-Personalized Insurance "Pay-as-you-use" models for motor, travel, and gadget insurance will rise. Dynamic pricing based on user behavior (e.g., fitness for health insurance) will become common. ✅ Stronger Rural & Tier-2/Tier-3 City Penetration Expansion beyond metros to rural India for micro-insurance and crop protection schemes. ✅ Sustainability & Green Insurance Introduction of "Green insurance products" (e.g., lower premiums for EV owners, sustainability-linked policies). 💠🔹🔷Conclusion: Health insurance will be the fastest-growing segment. General insurance will continue steady growth, with major players competing for motor, property, and liability markets. Digital transformation & insurtech will reshape the sector, benefiting tech-driven players like Go Digit & ACKO. Climate & EV-related insurance will create new opportunities, leading to innovative policy designs. 🔷🔹🔷🔹🔷🔹🔷🔹🔷🔹🔷🔹🔷🔹🔷🔹🔷🔹🔷 #IRDAI #Insurance #Generalinsurance #healthinsurance

This Kenyan startup is literally sucking CO₂ from the air and selling it Kenyan startup Octavia Carbon is building a Direct Air Carbon Capture (DAC) plant in Gilgil the first of its kind on the continent. It’s a serious engineering play -Uses geothermal energy -Captures 1,000 tonnes of CO₂ from the air annually -Stores it underground in volcanic rock -Sells carbon credits to global buyers This isn’t just another climate headline it’s infrastructure. Quietly being built, tested, and scaled right here. No noise. Just execution.The part that stands out to me? They’re using Kenya’s natural geology and energy mix as a competitive edge. Not trying to clone models from elsewhere they’re making something that fits where they are. I like this kind of work. It’s honest. Capital-intensive, science-heavy, long-term. Not the easiest path for a startup but arguably one of the most impactful. You don’t see many climate-tech teams going this deep into engineering. But maybe we’ll start seeing more. Props to the Octavia Carbon team. #climatetech #carbonremoval #hardtech #directaircapture #kenyatech #deeptech #startups #founderenergy #africa

Insurance landscape in India is still dominated by offline channels, with less than 2% of total premiums sold digitally. This makes insurance a heavily intermediated, push-driven product, where agents and brokers play a pivotal role. But is this really sustainable for the future? Let’s look at the data: 53% of individual life insurance policies are sold by agents. In group life insurance, 85% is distributed through corporate agents. Even in health and general insurance, intermediaries take the lion’s share. This raises critical questions: Are customers being truly empowered, or are they merely following the advice of intermediaries who are incentivized by commissions? Is this model serving the best interests of policyholders, or is it skewed towards meeting sales targets? Harsh reality is that insurance in India is often mis-sold. When agents, brokers & banks are focused on meeting their own financial goals, it automatically leads to customers being sold products that don’t match their actual needs or future goals. The complexity of insurance products also plays into this, as most consumers don’t fully understand what they’re buying, resulting in under-insurance or purchasing the wrong policy altogether. The high reliance on face-to-face interactions only adds to this issue. So, why haven’t we seen a digital breakthrough in insurance? With increasing internet penetration and smartphone usage, why are 98% of policies still sold through traditional, offline channels? Is it a lack of trust in digital platforms? Or is it because insurance, as a financial product, is still seen as too complex to be transacted online? The good news is that change is slowly happening. Interestingly, 35% of renewal premiums are now paid online, showing that consumers are becoming comfortable with digital transactions in insurance. But that raises another question: If renewals can be done online, why not the entire insurance journey—from discovery to claims? Could we envision a future where insurance is completely customer-driven, simple to understand, and just a click away? In my opinion opportunity for InsurTech to disrupt this space is massive. By leveraging AI, automation, and better customer education, industry can shift from a push to a pull model, where consumers actively seek the right insurance products based on their needs. The key lies in simplifying products and creating trust in digital channels. But the final question is: Will the industry embrace this change fast enough? Reference datasheet attached ⬇ Note : Incase you want to know more about Indian insurance market dynamics, I have discussed these points with some more in detail in my recent podcast (Link in comment section). #Insurance #InsurTech #DigitalTransformation #CustomerExperience #IndiaInsurance #FinancialServices #Fintech #LinkedIn

As a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Shreya Dave was fascinated with desalination technology and helping more people have access to clean water. She designed an efficient water filter alongside her classmate Brent Keller but unfortunately, it was too expensive for popular use. After realizing how much energy goes into separating chemicals in manufacturing, they began to see if their technology could be applicable elsewhere. Enter Via Separations, founded by Shreya, Brent, and their MIT professor Jeffrey Grossman, which is decarbonizing the manufacturing sector. Most manufacturing companies rely on a process that can be compared to getting pasta from a pot of boiling water to separate chemicals. They use evaporation, which is like boiling off an entire pot of water to get to the pasta. This process requires heat that often comes from fossil fuels. Massachusetts-based Via developed the equivalent of a pasta strainer for chemical separations, a process that achieves what evaporation does while using 90% less energy. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that switching to filtration-based chemical separations like Via’s can save roughly 3 billion tons of carbon per year. That is the equivalent of taking every single one of the world’s passenger cars off the road. After a few successful pilot demonstrations, Via is now beginning to install its solutions on a larger scale. Shreya and her colleagues are another example of people who took their passions and interests and existing work and found a way to use it to help the climate, serving as an inspiration to us all. https://lnkd.in/e2XESThf

The Energy Capital of The World is also the Energy Transition Capital. Another big breakthrough from a Houston Clean Tech Startup: Under the leadership of Cindy D. Taff, Sage Geosystems Inc. was selected to build a geothermal project to power Meta centers. Houston understands subsurface and fracking—geothermal leverages oil and gas expertise to use fractures for fluid injection. Sage Geosystems harnesses both heat and pressure to optimize energy extraction. Another Houston-based geothermal startup Fervo Energy partnered with Google to launch a 3.5-megawatt geothermal project powering Google's data centers in Nevada last year and is now working on a 115-megawatt project in the same state. Why are tech companies driving these projects? Because data centers are set to surpass traditional polluters when it comes to GHG emissions. For example Data centers in Ireland now consume more electricity than all residential homes combined. It's also affecting U.S. regions like Loudoun County, Virginia, and Grant and Douglas Counties in Washington. These areas face increased fossil fuel reliance or maxed-out hydropower, risking energy shortages. So while the digital revolution came from Silicon Valley, the clean tech innovation will come from the talent, resources and innovation right here in Texas. #geothermal #climatetech #climatevc #meta #energytech

If concrete were a country, it’d trail only China & the U.S. in carbon pollution. But one startup can slash its energy use by 40%. Their SVP shared the playbook in my MBA class at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 🙏 Huge thanks to Joe for giving up peak fall weather in North Carolina to talk climate tech (we don’t brag about July/August here—mosquitos, humidity, and regret). And to CEO Leah Ellis for bringing this deep tech to market! Why their solution matters: - Cement = ~8% of global CO₂. - Demand = +50% by 2050. What Sublime is doing: - Eliminating emissions from CO₂, CO, NOx, SOx, mercury, and particulates. - Turning low-value rocks + toxic industrial waste into clean cement & pure minerals (no leftovers, unlike today's Portland Cement, where 50% of limestone becomes pollution). - Meeting or beating durability standards with ASTM-compliant results. And this isn’t theory... Backed by Holcim, CRH, SIAM CEMENT GROUP, and Suffolk Construction, Sublime has been pouring real-world projects since 2023. 🏗️ 👇 Curious about partnering? Link in comments. #climatetech #startups #innovation #leadership Tracy Triggs-Matthews, Jeff Mittelstadt UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School