In episode 12, we welcome Ethan Soloviev, Chief Innovation Officer at HowGood, to Five Lifes to Fifty. Ethan is also an owner of High Falls Farm, and is the author of "Levels of Regenerative Agriculture" and "Regenerative Enterprise: Optimizing for Multi-Capital Abundance."

Ethan is an international expert on regenerative agriculture, regenerative business, and innovation, with experience in 34 countries. He is the founder of the Regenerative Enterprise Institute, an Associate of the Carol Sanford Institute, and a member of the Regenerative Business Alliance. Ethan holds a B.S. from Haverford College and an M.S. in Eco-Social Design from Gaia University.

At HowGood, Ethan's focus is on driving product sustainability and business model innovation for Fortune 500 Retail and CPG companies. HowGood is an independent research company and SaaS data platform with the world's largest database on food product sustainability.

In this Episode

Shelley: This is the first time we've had a guest from a technology company on the podcast. Could you tell us a bit about what HowGood is and who it serves? [00:33]

Ethan: HowGood, as you mentioned, has the world's largest database on food, product and ingredient sustainability. We're a non-traditional startup in that we're 17 years old right now. So, we've really spent the better part of two decades building out a massive picture of what global supply chains look like and what are the impacts that happen in three key areas: carbon, nature and human rights. From that massive amount of data that we've gathered for 33,000 ingredients, we've built up the capability to, automatically, using AI, calculate the impact of any food ingredient or product in the world. We've built it all into a software platform that is, I think, fun and easy to use and we have six of the ten largest food companies in the world using the platform to understand their impacts and to automate reduction strategies. We have major retailers around the world, from Ahold Delhaize in the USA to Carrefour in the Middle East, and we even have ingredient suppliers like Ingredion and the Kerry Group, who use the platform to understand their impacts and communicate downstream to their consumers. So overall, you can think of HowGood as a social network for impact data on food and agriculture. It’s the place where the industry comes together, whether you're a formulator or a procurement specialist, or someone in marketing and sales or a sustainability team needing to do reporting; everyone comes to us for a single source of sustainability data truth, so that they can coordinate, collaborate, network, engage with suppliers to transform the impacts of their products. [00:41]

Shelley: Thinking about the broader picture, you're bringing all these groups together, what do you think the role technology does play? Because it sounds like you're playing a role already, but what role do you think it plays for these food formulators and food companies? And what is it doing for them to achieve sustainability? [02:27]

Ethan: I'll just tell a little story that is part of how we got to where we're at now to answer that question. This was a number of years ago in San Francisco, it was at a co-lab, a sort of weeklong sprint event and I met somebody from Danone who said, look, I have 1000 product formulators globally at Danone and every day they are innovating and they are renovating new yogurts, new plant based beverages and those people, many of them really care about sustainability, but many of them weren't trained in it. They are food scientists. They are formulators. They are making deliciou...