23 July 2024 - CISL’s innovation team works to catalyse collaborative innovation to accelerate solutions to global challenges, and is pleased to welcome new members to our community.
The Canopy is CISL’s global community of impact-driven start ups, entrepreneurs, major companies and investors putting sustainability at the heart of their business models, and advancing solutions to achieve net zero, protect and restore nature, and build inclusive and resilient societies.
We deliver transformational impact working with major companies, entrepreneurs, academics and investors to foster market relevant, sustainability-led innovations in products, business models, sectors and systems.
Our startup accelerators, innovation labs and international partnerships take a whole systems view of innovation and build the knowledge, partnerships and networks needed to achieve change at scale.
Our Cambridge innovation hub – The Entopia Building – is unique in bringing together academia, corporates, and startups with CISL’s global leadership network pioneering sustainability-led innovation.
We are always delighted to have new members join our sustainability and impact-centred startup and scale-up community, and our newest members are testaments to the number of innovators looking to put people, nature and climate at the heart of their work.
Earth Blox – Dr. Genevieve Patenaude, CEO and Co-Founder
Earth Blox is a scale-up business with a mission to catalyse a future where businesses thrive in harmony with a healthy planet. Its geospatial software enables every business to assemble the unique environmental insights it needa to align corporate strategies with critical climate and nature-based regulations, ensuring a sustainable and prosperous future for all.
Genevieve has been part of the Canopy Ecosystem for a while, having taken part in our pitch days previously, commenting on this more official tie, Genevieve notes:
“CISL and Canopy bring together the best of the best in sustainability, from entrepreneurs to academics and international leaders in business and finance. We are delighted to join this dynamic community of impact-driven professionals to drive the change we need for a better future for all. We see our membership as key to accelerating the reach and impact of Earth Blox on sustainability transformation in business.”
Glitchers Enhance SPV Ltd – Maxwell Scott-Slade, Director of Games (company founder)
GLITCHERS is all about using the power of games to paint a picture of healthy global cognitive function. Founder, Max explains further:
"The problem is healthy cognitive benchmarks don’t exist and without them, we cannot effectively intervene early enough to have any meaningful impact on cognitive decline.
With 25 papers published and 4.5 million players, we’ve already proven that games can collect machine-ready data sets at an unprecedented scale. Sea Hero Quest is a casual mobile game that has enabled much earlier detection of spatial navigational decline for Alzheimer’s dementia.
Now we’re expanding this mission to include additional cognitive domains with an outlook to radically change the way neurodegenerative diseases are monitored and bring intervention timelines forward by decades.
To help with our mission we've joined Cambridge Canopy and we're incredibly excited at the new network this has opened to us."
Serendipitously, Max met James Cole, Head of Innovation at CISL on a flight back from Slush in 2023.
Since then GLITCHERS have been working on becoming Canopy members from a distance. The company based in Edinburgh, Scotland, and have been impressed with the events and network of entrepreneurs that Canopy offers.
We’re particularly looking forward to how we can be involved from a distance and take advantage of the (CISL) network. We’re looking for commercial partners who might be interested in licensing our data sets and tools for cognitive research, patient selection or health monitoring purposes. Perhaps even things we haven’t thought about that would push things forward in other fields.
FarmSetu Technologies – Dr Sachin Shende
FarmSetu Technologies is a specialised agricultural software and business consulting company based in Nashik, Maharashtra, India. FarmSetu is a “full-stack agri supply chain software platform”, providing an end-to-end digital solution to agri-enterprises and their farmers.
The company was established in Q4-2021 with a vision of providing an end-to-end “Full Stack Agri Supply Chain Management” platform for agribusinesses. The software platform is currently being implemented at 16 agribusinesses in Maharashtra with a mandate to onboard roughly 65,000 farmers.
Sachin is an agritech entrepreneur. He grew up on a farm, and combines the insights of a rural upbringing with recognised expertise in the development of data analytics and software platforms. He has previously conceptualised and developed software and data engineering platforms, built and scaled teams, raised venture funding and was involved in commercialising the technology.
He holds a Ph.D. in Computational Hydraulics from Loughborough University, and prior to founding his first startup KisanHub in 2012, managed the development of bonds trading and research analytics platforms for Barclays Global Investors and BlackRock.
State of Design – Sabin Anca, Architect and Director
State of Design is a multi-award-winning RIBA architecture practice based in Cambridge. Its approach combines boundary-pushing, imaginative architecture with practicality, all while maintaining harmony with nature. While in-house PassivHaus certification ensures that their buildings are designed to be highly energy-efficient they pride themselves for achieving this without sacrificing aesthetics, quality, or cost through long-standing collaborations with like-minded consultants.
Commenting on his new membership Sabin told us:
“I am excited by the opportunity to join Canopy, as it presents a chance to expand our network of such collaborations in our ongoing research into making plants and biodiversity an integral part of the environmental and energy strategy of buildings of all sizes.”
Ethical Product Management - Vasilis
It is Ethical Product Management’s mission to introduce early in the product life cycle a clear strong ethical dimension for the planet and people. Founder and CEO Vasilis states:
“A company should cause no harm through its operations. Maybe it can even strive to alleviate and regenerate damage if possible. We help technology entrepreneurs and more established product teams who want to steer their product strategy and design towards more sustainable products.”
The company looks to teach clients how to avoid the trap of looking at sustainability as a reporting or regulatory challenge; “instead we consider the transition as an opportunity to create new profitable Blue Ocean markets.” They provide tools and support to transform business models, value propositions and revenue streams.
“Being part of the Canopy community is an exciting development for us. The opportunity is there to share knowledge, learn from industry leaders and discover fly-wheel effects between young and established ventures.”
Find out more about the Canopy
Find out more about our work on innovation