(BRUSSELS)
Bertrand Piccard says ‘good communication’ can give startups a real edge.
Speaking to us for a special edition all about the European Innovation Summit’s inaugural EU Top 50 Startups event, where he’s giving the keynote, the serial pioneer is clear, that for early stage companies: ‘success will come from good communication.’
And young innovators could have no better mentor than Piccard, whose string of world-firsts speak for themselves.
In 1999 he piloted the first non-stop around-the-world balloon flight with teammate Brian Jones. While in 2016, he piloted the first ever solar-powered plane around-the-world, alongside co-pilot André Borschberg, in the history-making Solar Impulse plane. “The Solar Impulse flight showed the world that it is possible to push the limits of technology in order to build the foundation for a sustainable future,” said Ban Ki-moon, the then United Nations Secretary-General.
1000 solutions
And now Piccard is off again – this time to communicate to the world 1000 game-changing solutions that can ‘protect the environment in a profitable way’ and also help deliver international climate targets. He announced his plans to crisscross the planet in search of these 1000 solutions during this month’s UN Climate Change Conference (COP23) in Bonn.
“I want to select the best 1000 solutions and go around the world again – not with a solar plane but with a catalogue of solutions. I want to take them to governments, heads of state, to parliamentarians who have to make legislation, and to institutions and big corporations. It will show them what exists today and make clear they can be much more ambitious in the targets they want to reach,” he said.
Piccard will tell them that profit and ecology go hand-in-hand.
“Heads of state all tell me that the main problem is inertia; the difficulty to move things. And that ecology isn’t enough, as you have too much resistance from industry.
“What you need is to have the politicians owning the solutions, so they know which are the best solutions for their country; what is profitable, what can create jobs, and then they can incorporate it into their political programme. They are then in a position to say – look, we are going to do this because it will create jobs, it will make profit, it will sustain growth.”
He adds: “Even for climate change deniers, it will be logical to use these solutions.”
Each solution will be rigorously tested by an expert panel to see they make the grade on both profit and ecology.
“I want to bring key people together, into this new World Alliance: startups, companies, institutions and organisations that are producing, implementing or supporting the use of clean technologies, and offer them – free of charge – access to these independent experts – who give credibility to each solution,” he said.
Solutions Piccard insists already exist.
“I think there are a lot of people everywhere in the world; in startups, in universities, in research labs and even big corporations, with one or several solutions that are profitable and can protect the environment, but they are not known about, people have no idea that they exist.”
The 1000 will be showcased at COP24 in Poland next year.
European startups show the way
And European startups are very much on Piccard’s radar.
“One startup in Europe has invented a system of solar cells, to simultaneously produce heat and electricity,” he said. “Until now you had only thermal solar, or photovoltaic solar, and it combines the two; so on the same surface you can produce heat and electricity.”
Another one from Europe that he likes, is an innovation with the potential to shake up the electric vehicle market.
“This particular company has invented an additional power unit that you hook to your electric car, that allows you to travel an additional 600km. And you rent it, you don’t need to buy it. So you can have your little electric car for the city, which you use during the week, then at the weekend – when you want to go on a break – you rent the little trailer to give you the additional range you need for your electric car. This is really interesting.”
And what all these amazing innovations share, he says, is the need to be seen by the right audiences.
Bertrand with Dr Roland Strauss, MD of Knowledge4Innovation, which organises the European Innovation Summit. Picture taken at COP23, Bonn
“What I want to say to the startups, all the people gathered for the EU Top 50, all the innovators – they have to work on the political level, they have to promote themselves, they have to speak of profit, not only ecology,” he said.
“And we need to help them market themselves better. This is what people miss when they are innovators, the marketing part. They are very good scientifically but they don’t know how to communicate. And today lots of the success will come from communication. By becoming better known, better respected; they can bring their solutions to the market. This is where the World Alliance can help them because all our strike force is in communication; it is in the media; it is in the relationships we have with governments.”
Think differently
Of course, having a good mindset, being able to find different angles to challenges, is the all-important first step to success.
“What we have to do is to learn to think differently,” he said. “I believe that we have to understand that, as human beings – or even companies, we are prisoners of what we have learned to do. We are prisoners of our habits, prisoners of the paradigms that we believe are so strong and important.”
To break free of these habits, he tells innovators to lose the paradigms standing in their way.
“For me innovation is not when you have a new idea. Innovation is when you get rid of all substitutes, all beliefs, and this is how you can innovate. You don’t innovate with a new idea, you innovate when you understand the paradigm that prevents you from moving ahead, and you get rid of this paradigm.”
He added: “When I initiated Solar Impulse, the paradigm was that you can never fly longer than the 20 days, which I did with my balloon flight around the world. Because after 20 days – which is a long flight – you have no fuel, so you cannot continue. So you think ‘OK, we can never progress, we can never get better’ but that’s wrong. The paradigm is you have the fuel and you fly as long as you have the fuel. So to change the paradigm you need to stop having fuel. And Solar Impulse is a plane that changed the paradigm and flew with no fuel, and could actually fly forever.”
