Values guide us as individuals and as a company

Each of us has a moral compass. It’s something you’ve acquired through your life, and it keeps on updating without extra effort like an app you don’t even notice you have.

At the core of that moral compass are your values. These were partly formed as you matured towards adulthood and, partly, they keep on developing even later on. In different life situations different aspects of them get highlighted. Yet for the most part there they are the backbone of your character, representing what is important to you.

So, how then do a company’s values relate to personal values? Just like our own values, the company’s values have been sculpted over time. They have been defined together to create clarity within the company and between its employees, and also with an eye to our interactions with external people, customers and partners. As employees, we reflect our own values against the company’s – what do they mean to me, and how do I live by them in my daily work.

Our values support our purpose and direction

Canatu’s values are rooted in our origins. Typically for a company living the start-up phase, Canatu’s values were very much alive for its first decade – and the same can be said of the business, so it makes sense. Values were defined more clearly as strategic solidity grew and the number of people increased. The values were designed to help people to hop on board the story of Canatu, and become a part of it going forward.

Employees align together on values and use them as guidance on how to act and operate as part of the company. It is recognizable in the culture and gives us insight into what we want that culture to be. Values keep us on course to being who we are and who we want to be. As a company and as employees who make the company what it is.

We would not be the innovative partner of forerunners without our curiosity to discover. That curiosity would not have turned to an evolving business without our commitment to achieve and ability to find partners with whom we engage in collaboration for impact. And our longevity and persistence derive from our so-called rocket fuel, the passion for progress.

Let’s dive deeper what these four values mean for Canatu.

Curiosity to discover fires us up

In the beginning, there was curiosity. From the get-go, the founders of Canatu explored uncharted territory with curiosity combined with a thirst to discover new ways to do things. It’s in our DNA to get excited about new possibilities.

Curiosity is what sparks what we do and fires us up to pursue the world-changing potential of carbon nanotubes. It’s important to note that curiosity for curiosity’s sake would not have been enough to bring us where we are today. In that case, we’d probably be in an infinite loop of exploration. For us, curiosity connects with discovery that leads us ahead.

The curiosity to discover inspires us to keep learning through life. Both around our own areas of expertise and beyond them. We stay alert to what happens around the world and the key industries we currently work with. It drives us to foresee what we can develop now and further down the line. Curiosity to discover leads us to new opportunities.

As we discover new needs, we evaluate how CNT can improve or even transform products and processes for tomorrow. With great curiosity comes a great need to focus – we cannot be the best in everything. As a result, we have chosen to focus our curiosity to discover on highly engineered solutions in select industries.

Curiosity fuels innovation as we expand our expertise by working on forward-looking inventions with some of the most progressive companies in the world. Showing interest leads to increased sharing – and our understanding grows. We go beyond the surface, asking questions, listening actively and using critical thinking to advance breakthrough innovations with wide-reaching impacts. Curiosity helps us see the world from our customers’ perspective.

Together with our collaborators, we explore emerging new opportunities that lead to better products with the capability to transform life as we know it.

What role did curiosity play in leading you to the work you do? Do you track it back to what made you interested in certain things early in life, or is it something that woke up later? How does curiosity lead to discovery in your work?

Commitment to achieve is our engine

We at Canatu want our discoveries to make an impact in the world. There must be something that keeps us developing from the discovery forward. That is our commitment to achieve. You can look at it like this: if curiosity puts our head in the clouds (or in our case deep down into the nanosphere), commitment to achieve grounds us and focuses us.

It’s this dedication to our cause that has matured us as a company from a start-up to the company we are today with a clear vision and strategic focus. Currently, we focus primarily on the semiconductor and automotive industries with the offering for electrochemical sensing developing fast.

Our commitment to achieve unites us with our customers on shared missions and goals. They too are driven and committed to their cause. By committing to certain industries and applications, together we will create the difference that may transform whole industries in new directions.

When working in close collaboration, it is important to deliver day in and day out. Our commitment keeps us focused on delivering on and above our promises. It leads to accountability and taking responsibility to reach results. Being committed to setting and achieving meaningful goals is key, because the true measure of our success lies in our ability to execute our plans.

How did you get where you are in life? Was there a conscious push to achieve something? Where else in life do you see yourself commit to certain things – and what does the commitment lead to there?

Collaboration for impact is our accelerator

The world doesn’t run on carbon nanotubes alone. See, we understand our own position in the grand scheme of things. Despite the transformative qualities Canatu’s products have, our expertise really reaches its fruition in collaboration with others. Our collaborators are important for CNT to have a stage to shine. Finding industries and companies where we can implement our expertise, accelerates us in making a difference in the world.

Collaboration leads to better outcomes. In the thick of working together with others, we share our expertise and open new avenues for the people we work with – and we get the benefit of that too. Our nanotechnology expertise fits in well with the expertise of our industrial partners, which leads to breakthroughs and better products. You see, sometimes transformation is one tiny breakthrough away – our nano solution can have a massive impact.

Collaboration develops in ecosystems to generate greater impact. In our line of business, it’s often about research and the drive to create new products merging for impact. Most often the projects we are involved in require players from very different instances to get together to really make an impact.

Connecting with research ecosystems and academia gives us even more chance to be involved in cutting-edge solutions being experimented with. Collaborating with a broad group of different backgrounds evolves our expertise, too.

When do you feel most empowered? What do you bring to collaborations? And what do you get from them? Can you think of an instance when collaboration has really accelerated what you’re working on?

Passion for progress makes us resilient

What makes you strive for better results? Do you get to put your passion in your work?

All this work and innovation is fueled by our passion for progress. It’s the drive that is needed to match the ambition of some of the most forward-thinking companies in the world we work with. Together we put our passion for progress to work – it keeps us looking ahead and makes us resilient to get where we want to go.

If curiosity to discover is the starting point, our passion for progress is like the complementing other side of the coin. Curiosity gets us going and passion for progress keeps us going – it gets us over the finish line. This is seen on every level from individual tasks and projects to wider scale achievements on future solutions.

We have a passion to see beyond the status quo, which makes us a great partner for transformative projects. This desire to see things in a new light and act upon it raises our ambition and keeps us developing. Creating new things requires stepping into some level of uncertainty. We understand that progress takes many attempts to get it right, so our passion for progress gives us courage to experiment and go again. Also, when we can work on what we are passionate for and get to share our expertise with peers and partners, it makes work fun.

Playing the chemist of immaterial things, we put a bit of passion and purpose into the test tube and see what happens. It elevates our actions, and we find ourselves capable of making a significant impact on the world. Whether we’re transforming products with nano carbon or leading new initiatives, our passion underscores our dedication to craft a better future for many tomorrows.