Chevron Technology Ventures, which has an office in the Ion, has applications open for entrepreneurs looking for an opportunity in cleantech. Photo courtesy of Gensler

Calling all innovators looking for the next big climate technology — Chevron wants to help you find your next big opportunity.

Houston-based Chevron Technology Ventures has applications open for its second Chevron Studio cohort that matches entrepreneurs with promising technologies coming out of universities and labs. The overall goal of the studio — a collaboration between Chevron and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL — is to scale up and commercialize early-stage technologies that have the potential to impact the future of energy.

Applications for entrepreneurs are open through March 14. Once selected, there are three phases of the program. The first includes matching the selected entrepreneurs with the inventors of the selected intellectual properties, which will occur over three to four months. The next phase includes scaling up the product — something that will take one to two years, depending on the tech. The last step would be a trial or a pilot program that includes rolling out a minimum viable product at commercial scale at Chevron or an affiliate.

Gautam Phanse is the strategic relationship manager for Chevron Technology Ventures. He joins InnovationMap for a Q&A to explain more about the opportunity.

Gautam Phanse of Chevron Technology Ventures answers questions about this unique program. Photo courtesy

InnovationMap: What types of technologies is Chevron looking to bring into commercialization through this program? How is the program different from existing accelerators/incubators/etc.?

Gautam Phanse: Chevron Technology Ventures brings external innovation to Chevron. Key focus areas for CTV are industrial decarbonization, emerging mobility, energy decentralization, and the growing circular carbon economy. Chevron Studio is one of the tools to achieve this goal. The current focus areas for Chevron Studio are: carbon utilization, hydrogen and renewable energy, energy storage systems, and solutions for circular economy. These focus areas will be reviewed every year and additional areas could be brought into the mix.

The goal of Chevron Studio is to scale up and commercialize technology developed in the Universities and National Labs. We curate the intellectual property developed at universities and national labs and provide a platform to match entrepreneurs with the IP. The program provides seed funding and a pathway through incubation, pilot and field trials to scale up the technologies. The uniqueness of this program is its target and the breadth of its scope — all the way from incubation to field trials.

IM: How does Chevron Technology Ventures and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory collaborate on this project? What role does each entity play?

GP: CTV has a long history of supporting innovation and the startup community. And over the years we’ve seen the consistent gaps and the struggles that the startup companies have in scaling up technologies. We also have a long history of working with national labs and universities and have seen the challenges in getting these technologies out of the labs. The idea for Chevron Studio grew out of these challenges.

NREL’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center manages Chevron Studio, working closing with entrepreneurs and guiding them through the program while leveraging capabilities at the lab and activating the IEC’s network of cleantech startups, investors, foundations, and industry partners.

IM: What are you looking for from the entrepreneur applicants? Who should apply?

GP: We are looking for entrepreneurs who are seeking their next opportunity. They should have a passion in lower carbon solutions and the patience to work on early-stage technologies to see them through scale up and commercialization. Aspiring entrepreneurs with demonstrated passion are also welcome to apply. The entrepreneurs are expected to build a team, raise funds and grow the business providing competitive solutions to the industry.

IM: Tell me about cohort 1. How did it go and what were the participants able to accomplish?

GP: We were really excited about the response we got from both the entrepreneur community and the universities and national labs. We had a strong pool of entrepreneurs and a great mix of IP and frankly had a tough time making the selection. The first cohort had four entrepreneurs in the initial discovery phase. Some of them have now graduated, and we will be announcing the participants in the next phase — for scaling up — shortly.

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This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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Houston hospital performs first fully robotic heart transplant in the U.S.

robotic surgery

A team at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, led by Dr. Kenneth Liao, successfully performed the first fully robotic heart transplant in the United States earlier this year, the Houston hospital recently shared.

Liao, a professor and chief of cardiothoracic transplantation and circulatory support at Baylor College of Medicine and chief of cardiothoracic transplantation and mechanical circulatory support at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center, used a surgical robot to implant a new heart in a 45-year-old male patient through preperitoneal space in the abdomen by making small incisions.

The robotic technology allowed the medical team to avoid opening the chest and breaking the breast bone, which reduces the risk of infection, blood transfusions and excessive bleeding. It also leads to an easier recovery, according to Liao.

"Opening the chest and spreading the breastbone can affect wound healing and delay rehabilitation and prolong the patient's recovery, especially in heart transplant patients who take immunosuppressants," Liao said in a news release. "With the robotic approach, we preserve the integrity of the chest wall, which reduces the risk of infection and helps with early mobility, respiratory function and overall recovery."

The patient received the heart transplant in March, after spending about four months in the hospital due to advanced heart failure. According to Baylor, he was discharged home after recovering from the surgery in the hospital for a month without complications.

"This transplant shows what is possible when innovation and surgical experience come together to improve patient care," Liao added in the release. "Our goal is to offer patients the safest, most effective and least invasive procedures, and robotic technology allows us to do that in extraordinary ways."

7 can't miss Houston business and innovation events for July

where to be

Editor's note: While many Houstonians are flocking to vacation destinations, there are still plenty of opportunities to network and learn at tech and business events for those sticking close to home this month. From an inaugural biotech summit to the 12th edition of a local pitch showcase, here are the Houston business and innovation events you can't miss in July and how to register. Please note: this article might be updated to add more events.

July 10 - Out in Tech Mixer 

Out in Tech Houston provides an inclusive networking space for LGBTQ+ people and allies working in tech. Check out this relaxed, social-mixer event, hosted on the second Thursday of every month.

This event is Thursday, July 10, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at Second Draught. Register here.

July 14 – Latinas in Tech Coworking Day 

Connect with fellow Latinas in the industry at Sesh Coworking. Network or work alongside peers, board members and community leaders in a shared office environment.

This event is Monday, July 14, from 9-11:30 a.m. at Sesh Coworking. Find more information here.

July 17 – UTMB Innovation VentureX Summit

Attend the inaugural UTMB Innovation VentureX Summit, where innovators, entrepreneurs, researchers and investors will dive into the future of biotech. Expect panel discussions, fireside chats, a technology showcase and networking opportunities.

This event is Thursday, July 17, from 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m. at The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Find more information here.

July 17 – Open Project Night 

Collaborate on solutions for some of Houston’s most pressing issues at this month’s Open Project Night at Impact Hub Houston. Hear from guest speakers and listen to open mic pitches. July’s theme is Decent Work & Economic Growth.

This event is Thursday, July 17, from 5:30-7:30 p.m at Impact Hub Houston. Register here.

July 24 – NASA Tech Talks

Every fourth Thursday of the month, NASA experts, including longtime engineer Montgomery Goforth, present on technology development challenges NASA’s Johnson Space Center and the larger aerospace community are facing and how they can be leveraged by Houston’s innovation community. Stick around after for drinks and networking at Second Draught.

This event is Thursday, July 24, from 6-7 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 30 – Ion Bike Club

Join Bike Houston at the Ion for a 45-minute guided cruise through the Ion District and Midtown. Afterward, enjoy a complimentary beer and network with like-minded riders at Second Draught.

This event is Wednesday, July 30, from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

July 31 – Bayou Startup Showcase

Hear pitches from startups and small businesses from Rice University’s OwlSpark and the University of Houston’s RED Labs accelerators at the 12th annual Bayou Startup Showcase. Read more about this year’s teams here.

This event is Thursday, July 31, from 3:30-7 p.m. at the Ion. Register here.

Houston researchers: Here's what it takes to spot a great new idea

houston voices

Having a “promotion focus” really does create a mental lens through which new ideas are more visible.

Key findings:

  • New ideas can be crucially important to businesses, driving innovation and preventing stagnation.
  • Recognizing those ideas, though, isn’t always easy.
  • Nurturing what is known as “promotion focus” can help managers spot fresh ideas.

Whenever the late surgeon Michael DeBakey opened a human chest, he drew on a lifetime of resources: the conviction that heart surgery could and should be vastly improved, the skill to venture beyond medicine’s known horizons and the vision to recognize new ideas in everyone around him, no matter how little formal training they had.

Appreciating new ideas is the heartbeat of business as well as medicine. But innovation is surprisingly hard to recognize. In a pioneering 2017 article, Rice Business Professor Jing Zhou and her colleagues published their findings on the first-ever study of the traits and environments that allow leaders to recognize new ideas.

Recent decades have produced a surge of research looking at how and when employees generate fresh ideas. But almost nothing has been written on another crucial part of workplace creativity: a leader’s ability to appreciate new thinking when she sees it.

Novelty, after all, is what drives company differentiation and competitiveness. Work that springs from new concepts sparks more investigation than work based on worn, already established thought. Companies invest millions to recruit and pay star creatives.

Yet not every leader can spot a fresh idea, and not every workplace brings out that kind of discernment. In four separate studies, Zhou and her coauthors examined exactly what it takes to see a glittering new idea wherever it appears. Their work sets the stage for an entirely new field of future research.

First, though, the team had to define their key terms. “Novelty recognition” is the ability to spot a new idea when someone else presents it. “Promotion focus,” previous research has shown, is a comfort level with new experiences that evokes feelings of adventure and excitement. “Prevention focus” is the opposite trait: the tendency to associate new ideas with danger, and respond to them with caution.

But does having “promotion focus” as opposed to “prevention focus” color the ability to see novelty? To find out, Zhou’s team came up with an ingenious test, artificially inducing these two perspectives through a series of exercises. First, they told 92 undergraduate participants that they would be asked to perform a set of unrelated tasks. Then the subjects guided a fictional mouse through two pencil and paper maze exercises.

While one exercise showed a piece of cheese awaiting the mouse at the end of the maze (the promise of a reward), the other maze depicted a menacing owl nearby (motivation to flee).

Once the participants had traced their way through the mazes with pencils, they were asked to rate the novelty of 33 pictures — nine drawings of space aliens and 24 unrelated images. The students who were prepped to feel an adventurous promotion focus by seeking a reward were much better at spotting the new or different details among these images than the students who’d been cued to have a prevention focus by fleeing a threat.

The conclusion: a promotion focus really does create a mental lens through which new ideas are more visible.

Zhou’s team followed this study with three additional studies, including one that surveyed 44 human resource managers from a variety of companies. For this study, independent coders rated the mission statements of each firm, assessing their cultures as “innovative” or “not innovative.” The HR managers then evaluated a set of written practices — three that had been in use for years, and three new ones that relied on recent technology. The managers from the innovative companies were much better at rating the new HR practices for novelty and creativity. To recognize novelty, in other words, both interior and external environments make a difference.

The implications of the research are groundbreaking. The first ever done on this subject, it opens up a completely new research field with profound questions. Can promotion focus be created? How much of this trait is genetic, and how much based on natural temperament, culture, environment and life experience? Should promotion focus be cultivated in education? If so, what would be the impact? After all, there are important uses for prevention focus, such as corporate security and compliance. Meanwhile, how can workplaces be organized to bring out the best in both kinds of focus?

Leaders eager to put Zhou’s findings to use right away, meanwhile, might look to the real-world model of Michael DeBakey. Practice viewing new ideas as adventures, seek workplaces that actively push innovation and, above all, cultivate the view that every coworker, high or low, is a potential source of glittering new ideas.

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This article originally appeared on Rice Business Wisdom.

Jing Zhou is the Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Management and Psychology in Organizational Behavior at the Jones Graduate School of Business of Rice University. Zhou, J., Wang, X., Song, J., & Wu, J. (2017). "Is it new? Personal and contextual influences on perceptions of novelty and creativity." Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(2): 180-202.