Michael Sauvante

 

 

Michael Sauvante is executive director of Commonwealth Group. He has more than 30 years experience in new venture creation, and has long been a progressive thinker in the field of sustainability, corporate social and environmental behavior, and corporate responsibility.

Beginning in 1998, Mr. Sauvante founded Rolltronics Corp., VoltaFlex Corp. and InnoSigns to leverage new “roll-to-roll” manufacturing methodology. He later co-founded Seertech Corp. to consolidate these companies and provide a platform for growing new ventures.

Those projects evolved from pioneering work by Mr. Sauvante at HP Labs, where he initiated a new business development project intended to provide a more conducive lab-to-market environment for technologies that were not finding commercial outlets within the company. Mr. Sauvante solicited and received help for the project from Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen, author of “The Innovator’s Dilemma” and “The Innovator’s Solution,” and from Dr. Mark Rice, co-author of “Radical Innovation: How Mature Companies Can Outsmart Upstarts” and later dean at Babson. His efforts to develop pathways for new product commercialization within a company as large as HP were viewed as so game-changing that he was invited to use his project as the foundation for a custom Ph.D. designed to capture his ideas concerning new venture creation in mature companies. He reluctantly shelved those plans when he elected to leave HP to start Rolltronics.

Before joining HP, Mr. Sauvante founded NovaQuest, an IT consulting company; NovaQuest/proQuaestus a software company that developed an international trade database related to commodity classification and customs duty rates; Interconnect Options, which specialized in telecommunications systems; Warm Springs Development Associates, a real estate development company that led the initial development phase of a 700-acre high tech industrial park in Fremont, Calif.; and I.E.S. Construction Services, which served the heavy equipment segment of the construction industry.

Mr. Sauvante’s philosophy for building sustainable businesses is outlined in “The Triple Bottom Line: A Boardroom Guide,” published in the “Director’s Monthly” of the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD). His efforts to change California's laws to make corporations more socially and environmentally responsible is highlighted in the book, "Megatrends 2010: The Rise of Conscious Capitalism," by Patricia Aburdeen. He expanded on that topic in the article "Rewiring Corporate DNA," published by the Center for Business as an Agent of World Benefit at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. He is also principal author of the eBook, “So, You Want To Be An Entrepreneur?”

Along with corporate responsibility, Mr. Sauvante is a strong advocate of transparency. This became even more important following an unsuccessful takeover attempt of first VoltaFlex Corp. and then Rolltronics Corp. by a small group of investors who then embarked on a campaign of disinformation against the founders. By forming the Commonwealth Group as a non-profit corporation and The CEED Development Company (developer of the CEED Program), as a low-profit limited liability company (L3C), Mr. Sauvante not only puts his beliefs about corporate accountability into practice, but ensures that their programs' purposes are dedicated to public benefit.

In 2002, Mr. Sauvante was recognized by the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as one of 35 “Technology Pioneers” worldwide. He holds a dual Bachelor's degree in Business Administration and Technologies Studies.