Topeka Plug And Play: Corporate Founder

Photos by John Burns

EVERGY

Evergy has long recognized the potential advantages that startups can bring to the company and the community. The energy provider established an affiliate, Evergy Ventures, in 2015 to discover and support startups, and quickly recognized the benefits of a local Plug and Play partnership not only to encourage the development of entrepreneurial animal science and ag tech enterprises to fuel economic development but also to further facilitate its own interaction with startups working on service and distribution delivery enhancements for the energy industry.

“Through our Plug and Play partnership, we’re able to help bring new animal science and ag tech businesses to the region while also enhancing our engagement with startups looking at new solutions that could benefit our customers through a dedicated energy sector,” said Jeff Martin, vice president of customer operations.

Martin said the company recently established its five-year Sustainability Transformation Plan, which encompasses clean energy, grid modernization, an improved customer experience and cost competitiveness.

“Most of our customers want reliability and to know the lights will come on each day,” said Martin. “It’s our job to constantly assess the logic and logistics behind how we’re doing things and determine how we can perform better. The startups we’ll interact with will help Evergy employees think through new strategies and technologies developed by some of the brightest minds to support our plans to become a sustainable energy company and still maintain affordability and reliability.”

Martin, who participated in the first round of Plug and Play pitches last October and again in March, said the partnership provides an efficient avenue for discovering business enhancement opportunities, freeing up employees’ time.

“I’ve been very inspired by what I’ve seen and encouraged that we’ve already been able to introduce our employees to Plug and Play contacts,” he said. “We have people on our operations, engineering, IT, smart cities, community support and economic development teams and Evergy Ventures working closely to utilize what we’ve paid for as a founding member and dig deeper into new technologies that can help our customers. At any given time, Plug and Play can connect our business units with startups working on an opportunity we’ve already identified so we can move forward much more quickly.”

Martin said Plug and Play’s implementation in conjunction with Evergy’s five-year Sustainability Transformation Plan “will drive the goals and vision of the company. It’s a perfect time. I’m excited to see what happens next.”

HILL’S PET NUTRITION

Jesper Nordengaard, president of Hill’s Pet Nutrition, said Plug and Play offers significant opportunity.

“As a leader in companion animals and companion health, we have great innovation and robust pipelines, but this program will allow us to expand and work with this ecosystem and have new discoveries,” he said.

Dave Baloga, vice president of science and technology for Hill’s and a member of the GO Topeka Innovation Advisory Board, said the company’s fundamental belief that “the right nutrition can change everything”
fuels an interest in collaborating with startups that can accelerate the delivery of breakthroughs in pet nutrition, pet genetics, gut microbiome health, connected health and sustainability.

“The program is extremely responsive to our business goals and the needs of our pet parents,” Baloga said. “At the outset, we provided Plug and Play our wish list of various technologies, business models, practices and products. The quality of our sourced companies has exceeded our expectations. We would have never found these potential partners so quickly on our own.”

Hill’s has continued conversations with three companies that participated in the first cohort and Baloga said the company is looking forward to further interactions with other participating startups.

“We anticipate that if collaboration creates value for companies, they will want to stay in the area and grow their business and the innovation ecosystem to spur further economic growth,” Baloga said. “We look forward to these mutually beneficial partnerships to continue to provide animals with the best care humanly possible.”

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