The Discipline of Innovation: Roland Austrup Reveals How Innventure Bridges the R&D Gap

In this Accelerating Returns podcast interview, Diego Calligaro speaks with Roland Austrup, Chief Growth Officer at Innventure, about transforming unrealized multinational R&D into market-leading companies through a systematic, deterministic approach to company creation.

Watch the full episode here:

Diego Calligaro: What drives you as a leader and keeps you motivated?

Roland Austrup: I've always been a curious person who likes to build things. What drives me is seeing innovation around us and witnessing how we've grown over time. It's truly exciting to be at the forefront of innovation and progress.

DC: How did you transition from running a hedge fund to joining Innventure?

RA: Looking back at my career, I could never have imagined getting here several years ago. Life presents forks in the road, and that's how I got to Innventure—through career evolution.

I started in the hedge fund industry right out of university, and started my hedge fund in 1996. I met one of Innventure's co-founders serendipitously, and we became good friends, sharing ideas. While I was running my hedge fund, he was growing Innventure.

After years of running the business, it was time to pass the baton to the next generation. While stepping back to serve as a corporate director, Innventure was evaluating ways to monetize its first business, PureCycle. Dr. John Scott asked for my assistance, and I advised them to go public while dovetailing with a municipal debt strategy they were developing.

I thought maybe they'd invite me as a director. Instead, they said, 'We want you to join the company and help execute that strategy you just described.' I joined them in early 2021.

DC: What problem does Innventure solve regarding multinational R&D?

RA: Major multinational companies spend between 2% and 25% of their revenue on R&D. While this investment is crucial for competitiveness and innovation, multinationals excel at operating large businesses but often struggle with commercializing innovative technology solutions.

About 25% of multinational R&D focuses on areas outside their core competencies. They may not be the right party to commercialize these innovations, even though the end products could be highly valuable.

Take Procter & Gamble as an example. We've acquired and licensed technology from them to launch two companies: PureCycle, which recycles polypropylene plastic, and AeroFlexx, which creates sustainable packaging. P&G has strong sustainability goals, including plastic reduction and greater use of recycled materials. They're not in the packaging or plastic recycling businesses, but they need their products in more sustainable packaging.

When they couldn't find marketplace solutions, they invested in R&D that resulted in technology solutions for recycling polypropylene and creating sustainable packaging. They weren't the right party to commercialize this R&D, but they wanted these products in the market to help them and their customers hit sustainability targets.

This gap represents our opportunity. Multinational R&D is an ore body rich in gold, to use an analogy.

DC: What is Innventure's systematic approach for creating companies?

RA: What attracted me to Innventure's model is their systematic, deterministic approach to company creation. Our analysis follows four key stages:

First, we evaluate the unmet market need. We work with multinationals to understand these needs and assess whether their technology solution uniquely solves problems no one else is addressing.

Second, we conduct technical validation. Does it work? Does it solve the problem? Can it scale?

Third, we perform financial modeling and develop a go-to-market model. We must answer one simple question: Does this business provide an immediate, quantifiable value proposition that will compel market adoption?

Fourth, we create the company—but only after completing the previous steps. By this point, we've validated the technology, sized the market using data from our multinational relationships, and often secured them as first customers or market channels.

This approach mitigates many risks typical in company creation. To launch our first three companies, we evaluated about a hundred opportunities and rejected most for not meeting our criteria.

DC: How do you structure deals with multinationals, and what's in it for them?

RA: Compensation to multinationals typically combines minority equity and/or royalties on external sales. However, that's not their main value driver.

The real advantage for multinationals is gaining exposure to the commercialized technology solution. Their returns aren't necessarily financial—sometimes they're driven by sustainability mandates, other times by economic benefits from integrating the end product into their business lines. They see these solutions as potentially moving the needle for their operations.

DC: What major challenges have you faced building this model?

RA: Three main challenges stand out. First, establishing credibility with multinationals. We started with Procter & Gamble, and their endorsement was crucial. They took us to conferences like Davos and the Sustainable Brands conference.

Second, transforming industries means navigating uncharted waters. There are no established protocols. You must be nimble and reactive to opportunities as they emerge.

Third, capital raising remains challenging for innovative businesses. Many startups fail not for lack of good ideas but inability to raise capital. That's why we've built a strong internal capital markets team.

What we're doing is differentiated—we don't see anyone else specifically doing this in the marketplace.

Q: How does Innventure differ from traditional venture capital?

RA: I'd categorize the differences in two ways: structure and investment approach.

Structurally, traditional VCs operate under GP/LP structures - private funds with defined investment, incubation, and realization periods. A typical VC fund might take 10-15 years to return capital. They're illiquid. We're different - we're a public operating conglomerate trading on NASDAQ. We're essentially a diversified group of operating companies. Investors can buy our stock for exposure to our entire group and sell when they choose.

Our investment approach also differs fundamentally. Traditional VC uses a 'spread betting' model, placing numerous investments and allocating additional capital to winners. They need only 10-20% success rates because a few big winners generate returns.

We take a rifle approach. We maintain a small, manageable group of companies with the goal of making all successful. We believe we can achieve 70-80% success rates through discipline in business creation.

Evidence supports this approach. Deloitte research shows structured commercialization models are 30-40% better at hitting commercial milestones. MIT research indicates innovations from multinational R&D have 60% lower technical failure rates.

We focus on risk mitigation: finding unmet market needs, avoiding years of technology development, utilizing multinational market data, and securing them as channels to market. Our approach is systematic and designed to reduce risk.

Importantly, we're not investing in other people's businesses - we're owners and operators of companies we create. Starting from zero rather than investing at established valuations theoretically provides potential for higher returns on invested capital.

Q: What advice would you give entrepreneurs aspiring to build significant companies?

RA: Having a good idea doesn't mean you can run a business. Building the right team is crucial. Running a successful business requires understanding supply chains, raising capital, operations, marketing, and branding.

If you're an entrepreneur with a good idea, don't assume that alone qualifies you to run a business. Surround yourself with talent and build an operating team that helps mitigate risks and succeed in commercializing your business.

DC: What key lesson emerged from your investment experience?

RA: Our hedge fund performed well in 2008, up over 40%, by taking short positions and flight-to-quality assets. However, we experienced losses from 2016 to 2019 during sideways, directionless markets.

The critical lesson: maintain discipline.

We erred by not believing interest rates could go negative, missing opportunities by abandoning our momentum strategies on long bond positions. Style drift created challenges for several years.

This reinforced what attracted me to Innventure—their systematic, deterministic approach to company creation. Whether in hedge funds or company building, maintaining your model and remaining disciplined allows probabilities to work in your favor.

DC: Looking back, would you change anything about your career path?

RA: I wouldn't change anything. The key was developing systematic approaches rather than ad hoc methods. Analyze what works and what doesn't, then build systematic approaches around successes.

But remain open to opportunities. Have systematic, disciplined evaluation methods for career growth, yet stay flexible. The world constantly evolves—the adage of survival of the fittest is real.

Success requires both systematic discipline and adaptability to navigate unexpected changes.

Q: What excites you most about the future?

RA: I have faith in humanity's ability to solve problems. Throughout history, we've faced walls of worry, but our survivalistic instinct drives us to find solutions. I focus on opportunities rather than concerns.

The amount of innovation occurring is remarkable. Multinationals invest trillions annually in R&D, with about 25% targeting innovations outside their core business. The volume is overwhelming - visit any TED conference or look online.

The digital age has created more opportunities than ever before. My son once said, 'Dad, we're not modern humans. We're the first recorded generation of ancient history.' I believe tremendous opportunities lie ahead.

Where can people find you to continue this conversation?

RA: You can reach me, Roland Austrup, on LinkedIn. You can find Innventure on LinkedIn. We also have X and YouTube—you can find us at @WeAreInnventure on those platforms.

And please do reach out. I love to have interesting conversations with people who share our passion for turning innovation into impact.

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The key takeaway from this conversation? As Roland emphasized throughout the interview: "Maintain discipline." Whether evaluating opportunities from multinational R&D or building companies from scratch, success comes from systematic approaches rather than ad hoc methods.

This disciplined mindset—combined with access to billions in stranded R&D and a public company structure that enables long-term value creation—shows what's possible when venture creation is grounded in validated market needs, proven technology, and strategic partnerships with the world's largest companies.

For leaders wondering why so much corporate innovation never reaches the market, perhaps it's time to ask: Are we trying to commercialize everything ourselves, or partnering with those who can transform our R&D into market-leading businesses?

Watch the full episode here:

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This article contains forward-looking statements that are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Such risks and uncertainties, including funding, regulatory, operational and market risks, are discussed and identified in Innventure’s SEC filings, which can be accessed at https://ir.innventure.com/financial-information/sec-filings. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the publication date.