Transcript

Doing more with less – like building and expanding the urban housing and infrastructure the world needs, while becoming and remaining carbon neutral – requires innovation. And most lasting innovation comes from collaboration. In the last of our three videos with TITAN Group CEO Marcel Cobuz, he discusses TITAN’s €40m investment in sustainable start-ups, the ways the group promotes innovation internally, and how it engages with and invests in the communities local to its operations.

World Finance: My guest is TITAN Group’s Marcel Cobuz – Marcel, since we are talking innovation, I want to know more about your broader contribution to the innovation ecosystem – tell me about your CVC strategy.

Marcel Cobuz: We launched our venture capital initiative in 2023, and since we’ve made significant progress. Under this, we are planning to invest in relevant start-ups, mainly in our sector: materials, nanotechnologies, but also digital, as we are targeting ventures that can create business value and advance innovation for our customers and stakeholders, mainly through client venturing.

We have already completed, as part of our deployment of €40m plus, eight investments in six startups and companies working on artificial intelligence, property tech, construction tech, next-generation cementitious materials, and we have taken participation in one VC fund in Europe, and one in the US.

These collaborations underscore our commitment to supporting start-ups to complement our research and development efforts, in order to enhance our, and industry’s, competitiveness. This addresses challenges like decarbonisation, but also promoting innovative and fast construction.

World Finance: How do you promote innovation internally?

Marcel Cobuz: At TITAN, everything is about people. So is innovation of any kind, which we leverage for their development, for attracting talent, for enablement and empowerment. It’s part of our culture.

And we want to ensure that nobody gets left behind. We have numerous learning initiatives and tools, and we our supporting our employees to improve their digital skills, making sure that they keep pace with the transformation underway.

But we go beyond that. Our vision is to have a broader entrepreneurial mindset at all levels. With that in mind, in 2023 we introduced our Ideation Challenge, our internal competition which encourages and rewards innovation with all our teams.

Our Ideation Challenge has already become an institution and we are now on its third year, and we see an impressive response.

World Finance: Finally, how do you engage with and support the communities you’re working within?

Marcel Cobuz: Our focus is on creating value for all our stakeholders and working with local communities around our operations. We conduct local assessments to understand the issues that matter most to each community, to contribute in a meaningful, sustainable, and durable way. Therefore our efforts sometimes focus on the environment, education, improving employability, entrepreneurship, and poverty reduction, depending on where we operate, with a particular emphasis on helping and educating young people.

For instance, the partnership we are very proud of with ReGeneration: the largest paid placement, professional, and personal development programme in Greece. But we also have initiatives in the US designed to provide young women with the skills needed to work in the industry in the future. But I can also refer to a programme we have in Brazil, introducing young minds to the world of robotics and overall digitalisation.

This is the final video from this interview with Marcel Cobuz; watch the first video here: Innovative building materials and solutions: creating the cities of the future

And don’t miss the second video: TITAN Group: Sustainable and smart construction, powered by digital technology