"Sustainability Innovation Champion": InTraCoM presents patent-based sustainability award 2021

Every month InTraCoM GmbH awards a sustainability champion of a certain industry and recognizes it with the "Sustainability Innovation - Award".

The most sustainable innovator of the month January 2021 is "SUNPOWER CORPORATION". Congratulations! More than 96% of the patent portfolio value is dominated by sustainable patents, resulting in a sustainable patent value of about 520 million euros. For comparison: In the same sector, an average sustainability share of 28% was determined, SUNPOWER has thus more than tripled the industry average.

Patents are early innovation indicators. They provide a preview of what a company has planned for the future in terms of new products, components and processes. The particularly valuable patents are candidates for later innovations. Accordingly, patents - and their values - are the blueprint for successful R&D. If a company invests in sustainable technologies, products and processes, it also documents this with patents. If these are also valuable, they are very likely to be subsequent sustainability innovations. Accordingly, these sustainable patents are also a blueprint for a company's active innovation efforts in the sustainability sector. In a study published by InTraCoM GmbH in February 2020, for example, it came as a surprise that companies with a distinctly sustainable perception were not necessarily always able to back this up with correspondingly sustainable patents. On the other hand, companies from the 2nd or 3rd tier surprised with distinctly sustainable and sustainably growing patent portfolios, but which have not been noticed as such so far. Unjustly so, we think. These "Hidden Sustainablility Champions" are recognized with the new "Sustainability Innovation Award".

Selection procedure:

Only the patent portfolio of the respective company serves as the basis for selection. This is evaluated using our automated process and the value of the sustainable patents is then put in relation to the total portfolio value. This ratio is compared with the industry average. In addition, however, the trend is also taken into account, i.e. whether the sustainable patent value has increased over the last few years. The total patent portfolio value is also considered so that small companies with only one sustainable patent do not top the list. Primarily, industries are considered that show a generally high patent activity.