Emerging Leaders Q&A – Iliana Portugues

Iliana “Ili” Portugues has extensive experience spinning out technologies and companies from academic institutions and utilities and growing them internationally. She is also developed successful national strategies, having co-authored the Scottish Smart Grids Strategy and the Energy Resiliency Plan for the US Department of Energy. She is a member of the UKRI and Supergen Energy Networks Strategic Advisory Committees, and a board member of Flexis and the Cheshire Energy Hub.

At NGP, Portugues and her team work across National Grid UK and National Grid Ventures, the company’s deregulated clean energy subsidiary, to develop a creative commercial culture and invent technologies and markets for the energy system of the future. (As one example, she and her team have developed a prototype for a smart helmet that will keep utility field workers safer by allowing supervisors back in the office to remotely “see” what the linespeople are seeing.)

1. First, just give us a quick overview of who you work for, what you do, and how long you have been doing it.

I have been head of disruptive innovation for the UK at National Grid Partners (NGP) for just over one year. This is my first role within CVC. We are a relatively new fund, $300m and counting based in Los Gatos investing in the future of energy. We see growing trends in decarbonisation, digitisation and decentralisation impacting the relatively hardened energy industry at an accelerating pace and we want to be part of it from the beginning. My role focuses on the development of disruptive innovation across our two UK businesses and our four Ventures business units, which are part of our unregulated sister company working on clean energy. I work at the confluence of research, innovation and entrepreneurship. Like all other entrepreneurs, my aim is to have my team and myself pitch concepts and opportunities to our investment committee and seek support and funding. If approved, those projects may then get passed on to National Grid business units for implementation or spun out as stand-alone businesses.

2. What attracted you to CVC?

I love research, innovation and entrepreneurship. The first startup I founded was the spin-out of the technology I developed in my PhD. I bootstrapped all the way, with support of bank debt and government loans. The team worked from a garage, and at one point, I was working 24/7 with systems installed in Australia, Asia, Europe and all USA time zones. Since then, I have seen many entrepreneurs in energy, technology and greentech just like me. I think the value and power the CVCs can bring to these startups and entrepreneurs, from an investment, knowledge, contacts and expertise, is invaluable; in many cases, CVCs define the difference between success and failure. In this way, they define what the future will look like. As someone who has spent their whole career trying to create the future, CVC was a logical progression.

3. What have been your greatest successes at your unit?

Without a shadow of a doubt, getting my first project at NGP from concept through to investment in five months must be it. The solution uses commercial safety wearables to combine two things: a hands-free augmented reality platform for operational staff and a web-based application for teams and managers to drive enhanced, safety, wellbeing and operational performance to staff, reducing their time to perform a typical field intervention by 20%. I think this is a great idea; not only have these technologies the potential to save lives but also to increase the productivity of teams having a positive impact on the bottom line. Normally, increased industrial safety is associated with extra operational costs, and this is the complete opposite; it makes sense.

4. What have been your biggest challenges?

My career has focused on delivering technology innovations focused on financial growth, efficiency and operational improvements to established players in the energy industry. Developing a portfolio of disruptive innovation concepts and managing this portfolio, in an organisation that has never done this before, has been a steep learning curve. In many aspects, it has been like going back to university and re-learning a lot of things.

5. What is your main professional ambition for the future?

We have a large challenge ahead, which is the decarbonisation of society and our 2050 net-zero commitment. My professional ambition is to make certain we achieve this target through the right investments and bets in the technology, in a way that is fair and economically sustainable to all levels of society, in particular to those that are most vulnerable. To achieve this, I would of course like to grow my circle of influence, maybe lead a CVC fund in the future myself or have a senior executive position in an organisation with the capacity to make a difference. I think corporations and CVC are the key to make this sustainable and fair future a reality.

6. What do you think all CVCs could do better to make it a stronger industry?

I would like CVCs to work more closely with governmental organisations and academic institutions. I think there is a lot of knowledge, experience and insights in CVCs that could positively impact government spending and policies. When NASA’s funding peaked, it consumed 4% of the US federal budget; three years later, after less than a decade of serious investment, man was on the moon and technologies that had a significant impact on how we live our lives today were invented. I think there is a lesson there for us to learn from to maximise the social and environmental impact we can make as an industry. The academic relationship thought is based on my experience as an entrepreneur within an academic organisation in the UK and seeing how current commercialisation activities take (or don’t take) place in many European institutions. There are some great people and solutions there that can do with CVC involvement because the value for some does not necessarily come in the form of financial investment.

7. And, finally, for colour, what did you do prior to CVC or in your spare time?

Before CVC, for the previous four years, I headed the innovation team for one of our group businesses, National Grid Electricity Transmission. I managed a yearly portfolio of approximately 100 projects focused on driving the transformation and value of the organisation. A great experience in which we managed to create and deliver some great changes. Before then, as I referred to previously, I was an entrepreneur, an academic, and spent some years working for the Electric Power Research Institute.

My spare time is spent around three main areas. The first, spending time with my family of course. The second sports, all types of sports, from mountain biking, sailing, running, the gym, basketball, football; if there is something on offer, I am in. In fact, most of the time I spend with my family, we spend doing some sort of sport or activity. The third, reading. I really enjoy reading a mixture of academic publications focused on energy transition, whole-system thinking and new innovation thesis and literature. So, if anyone reading this is organising some sort of sports activity or has an interesting article or paper to read, please let me know.