Yesterday, Greentown Labs had the pleasure of hosting senior executives of Saint Gobain as part of a day-long company offsite tour they refer to as “Innovation Day.”  Now an annual event for the company, the Innovation Day is the brainchild of John Crowe, CEO of Saint-Gobain North America.  He developed the offsite meeting for his team to explore disruptive innovation, technologies and future growth opportunities for the business.  Greentown Labs was delighted to host the first Saint Gobain Innovation Day on the East Coast, following last year’s visit to Nest, Tesla and Google in Silicon Valley.

Executive Director, Emily Reichert, and Executive Vice President, Mark Vasu, toured the group through Greentown Labs and the group met with the teams of Altaeros Energies, Dynamo Micropower, and NBD Nano. Lunch included company presentations from six Greentown member companies that focus on building energy, energy efficiency, and personal energy comfort:  Save Energy Systems, Crowd Comfort, Embue, Building Envelope Materials, Wristify, and future member, Avalanche Energy (pictures below).   Wristify is developing its wearable, thermal comfort technology and tested some of its first prototypes and received mentorship and feedback from Saint Gobain engineers based in the company’s R&D facility in Northboro, MA.

Although not a household name in the U.S., Saint Gobain is a 4oo-year-old French company, the 161th largest multinational corporation of the Global 500 and one of largest suppliers of construction and building materials in the world.