Capital — No early stage technology startup work happens without those that support the effort! When pursuing a purpose-driven agenda, this can present unique challenges identifying aligned investors that both value economic returns and purpose-driven impact. Fortunately, the list of funds supporting infrastructure and clean energy development has blossomed in the last decade, many of whom eschew the conventional VC model of 5–7 year returns in favor of longer return timelines and recognition of broader and more impactful corporate missions.

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, purpose-driven models are at the forefront of innovation. These businesses are not just focused on profit, but are also committed to making a positive impact on society and the environment. In this interview series, we are speaking with visionary leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators who are pioneering purpose driven businesses. I had the pleasure of interviewing Joe Adiletta.

Joe Adiletta, VP of Battery Communications at Sylvatex, is an experienced executive with demonstrated success and value-add in the battery manufacturing industry including technology development, business development, operations, and marketing. He brings 20+ years of battery industry experience with companies including Ionic Materials, 24M Technologies, and A123 Systems. He has delivered shareholder value creation in numerous roles by affording consistent, profitable growth, continuous improvement in operations, building strategic relationships, developing robust IP strategies, and monetizing technology options.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. Can you share a bit about your background and what has led you to your current role?

First, thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about driving a business with purpose! On my background, I’m classically educated as an engineer with a graduate business degree. I never thought that sitting behind a computer doing hardcore engineering work was for me, so I gravitated towards the product side of the business before grad-school. After graduating from MIT, I knew that I wanted to do more customer-focused work, and ended up doing consulting work on the fuzzy front-end of innovation.

One of the many projects that I worked on involved vehicle electrification for industrial equipment, and this really got me hooked both on the coming electrification of everything, but also that “hard tech” work could be coupled with societal benefit. I really hadn’t considered that possibility before.

My real transition into the cleantech sector began with A123Systems back in 2006, and, really it’s serendipity. We all work hard to find jobs, but as Pasteur said, “chance favors the prepared mind.” I just happened to have had A123 founder, Ric Fulop, as a guest lecturer at one of my MIT Sloan classes; and, I just happened to have volunteered to help with the very first MIT Energy Conference in the spring of 2006; and, A123 just happened to have an opening for someone like me three months after the conference concluded. That’s a lot of “happened to have”s, and while chance aligned those events, I was prepared to seize the opportunity.

Can you share your journey into developing purpose-driven business models?

In business, you learn a lot about value-based pricing and how to capture value in the creation of business models. I ask myself frequently, what “should” we do? And often my internal response is, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”. And that response, I would argue, can be out of the ordinary. I remember a negotiation class in business school where you roleplay a case, and my counterpart was extraordinarily frustrated because I refused to engage with a strategy of profit maximization — the purported “logical” outcome — rather opting for an outcome that I thought created broader value.

There are aspects of business, technology, the workplace and life more broadly that have value that aren’t purely profit or revenue driven. These often unquantifiable values have merit, and I suppose that over time, I have leaned into roles where I have the opportunity to explore them. And, as my career has progressed, and I am thrust into roles with increasing responsibility, ensuring that purpose-driven value is accounted for has become a priority.

What inspired you to build a business that integrates purpose at its core, and how has your background influenced this?

We arguably spend more time at work every day than we do with our loved ones. So, each day, people across the globe wake up and ask themselves, why do I do what I do? There are a lot of different answers. For some, it’s at the base of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — they’re just putting food on the table. For others, it’s chasing financial goals. For others, like professional athletes, it’s chasing the dream of a championship (Go Birds!).

I admit that I occupy a relatively privileged position, to be able to ask myself every day, “does what I do today make a difference.” I cannot pinpoint an exact moment or story when this became true for me, but “building” — whether it was legos as a kid, or gliders in college, or business plans in grad school — always felt right. So, the question was what to build?

I can remember a senior trip in high school — a retreat of sorts — where we were asked what we wanted to do with our futures. I wanted to change the world. For me, getting into that frame of mind does not lend to dreams about SAAS-based marketing businesses!

So, I’m a mechanical engineer (who always liked planes and cars) with a penchant for external interaction, idle curiosity, a competitive desire to win, and a business degree. Where does that background take you in the context of overwhelming industrial change in the mid-2000s? It led me to A123Systems, and the electrification of everything.

How has your leadership evolved as your business model has shifted to a more purpose-driven approach?

With experience comes the acknowledgement that businesses like ours — a highly technical, materials science/chemistry business — while founded on technology, are really about the people. Consequently, as you consider leadership in not just a technology company, but in a purpose-driven technology company, ensuring that you have the right people in place that value the purpose, and support them in their purpose-driven endeavors becomes critical.

Specifically, over the last decade, I have devoted more of my time investing in employee growth, mentoring, and personally helping where I can. Society has evolved from one where you are expected to leave your life at the door when you come to work, to one where I can expect someone to come as their whole self. I thoroughly encourage this, but this also means acknowledging that people have problems — financial, medical, relationship, etc.; as well as personal goals — career, financial, purpose-driven, etc.

In the absolute sense, my leadership has evolved from a tech-oriented one to a people-oriented one.

Can you share a specific example of how your business model has created positive social or environmental impact?

At Sylvatex, we produce lower cost, lower capital, lower carbon cathode active material (CAM). This is the most expensive and carbon intensive part of a lithium ion battery. We offer a cost reduction on that material, and look to pass that as far down the value chain as possible towards the consumer. The end goal is to accelerate the adoption of these environmentally beneficial technologies via strong economic incentive — lower consumer cost. Given the choice of padding corporate margins and selling products at market prices versus working to ensure lower costs to consumers, we have chosen the latter. This does not mean compromising profitability. In fact, quite the opposite! As I mentioned earlier, we do not have to maximize profit to ensure a highly profitable business. We want to make it easy for our customers to say “yes”; and, also for society to benefit broadly from our innovation.

What legacy do you hope your business will leave in terms of its impact on society or the environment?

We are in the business of leveraging manufacturing innovation to enable domestic supply chains and production of globally, competitive, low-cost materials for lithium-ion batteries. By working with EV manufacturers and cell manufacturers directly, we aim to reduce the end cost of climate-changing technologies to end consumers — EVs and Grid Storage. Our vision is to accelerate the adoption of these technologies, leaving a legacy of a cleaner, more sustainable planet, while at the same time delivering on the potential of the US manufacturing base! High quality, well paying manufacturing jobs and new technology development and deployment do not have to be at odds with one another. Quite the contrary, we can be leaders in global manufacturing!

What challenges have you faced in aligning profit with purpose, and how have you navigated those tensions?

This is a very interesting question, especially as we offer a product with a cost advantage versus a conventionally produced analog. As you can imagine, the fundamental question boils down to how to approach the market? In the limit, you have two options. You can pass all of that savings along to the customer base, selling a highly discounted product that likely gains you maximum market share; or, you can sell at market rate, and pad your profit margin quite substantially.

Fundamentally, we believe that developing innovative technologies in the fight against climate change requires that we build a highly profitable business while also accelerating the adoption of key new energy technologies. Fortunately for us, we are able to have our cake and eat it, too. Fundamentally, businesses don’t exist in the absence of profit. That said, going back to the previous questions, “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”!

How do you measure the success of a purpose-driven business beyond financial metrics?

From a business perspective, I would use the word impact. Across different types of businesses there are both common measures and business-specific impacts that we could measure. For a business like Sylvatex, providing novel materials to new energy technology companies, we might look at the impact of the technology on our customer’s businesses (EV makers, for example) or their customers (consumers). A purpose driven business, by definition, has a purpose, and consequently, measuring the outcome of that driver should be possible. For us, that might mean reduced EV costs and/or increased adoption.

Commonalities across purpose-driven businesses might include things like reduced employee turnover. If we focus on hiring people that are aligned with the vision and purpose of the company, and believe that there is value other than strictly financial there, we would expect to lose fewer employees, as they would be happier and more productive in pursuing a greater purpose. John Doerr wrote a great book, Measure what Matters, which starts with the premise that business-critical items can and must be measured, and that these objectives align the company around a common direction. Infusing purpose-driven values into daily business operations can seamlessly be integrated into frameworks such as these to achieve purpose-driven business success.