business
25 MOST INNOVATIVE
COMPANIES OF 2022 by Peter Campbell
I
nnovation — we all strive for it. Some even achieve it. The aim nowadays is towards sustainability, improving working processes, and harnessing Big Data. Below are 25 of the most innovative companies making waves today.
STRIPE CLIMATE
BLOCPOWER
Stripe Climate tackles the ongoing issue of climate change head-on by allowing customers of its online payments company, Stripe, to join its strategy to fund ambitious carbon-removal technology by contributing a percentage of their digital sales that flow through Stripe’s software.
BlocPower addresses the consumption of fossil fuels by residential buildings by removing boilers, furnaces, stoves, and other oil and gas-based products. The start-up is providing electricity to buildings — especially in low- and middleincome communities — by installing technologies such as heat pumps.
SOLUGEN
CLIMATE TRACE
Solugen has developed a process of turning corn syrup into industrial chemicals, using enzymes and metal catalysis. The company’s Houston bioforge creates none of the emissions of petrochemical processes and has yields of up to 90 per cent.
A coalition of organizations formed in 2020, Climate Trace — with access to 59 trillion bytes of data from more than 300 satellites and 11,000 sensors — updates and maintains greenhouse gas emissions estimates in order to give countries the insights they need to direct climate mitigation efforts more productively.
TWELVE This start-up has created a carbon transformation process that enables newly created chemicals to be used as a one-for-one replacement, thereby lowering the carbon footprint of Twelve’s customers without affecting product performance.
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the EDGE Spring 2023
WATERSHED Watershed uses software to help companies such as Airbnb, DoorDash, Shopify, Sweetgreen and Warby Parker to assess their CO2 emissions, develop a reduction strategy, and connect to carbon-removal solutions. By the end of Watershed’s first year, it helped customers
manage emissions equivalent to more than four times the carbon footprint of San Francisco.
DOCONOMY Once its users complete a detailed survey, Doconomy is able to estimate an individual’s annual emissions in categories such as transport, home, shopping, and diet. As well as their Lifestyle Calculator, Doconomy has created a 2030 Calculator that simplifies the process of calculating the carbon footprint of manufactured products across multiple product categories.
MICROSOFT Upon analyzing over a trillion data points from a multitude of resources over the past couple of years, Microsoft noticed patterns that are now being used to inform new product features, such as a scheduling option designed to ensure employees get breaks between meetings.
SPACEX By lowering the cost of launch and expanding the number of opportunities for space travel — along with a record
