Building Momentum: The Super South’s Unique Moment in Climate Innovation
Bill is a career tech CEO with several exits, including a billion-dollar IPO. He is now a partner at Tech Square Ventures and Engage. At TSV, he leads the firm's enterprise accelerator and corporate innovation platform, Engage.
Bill is passionate about climate tech and clean energy, giving a TED talk on startups disrupting the industry. This grew into a podcast and later a book called Freeing Energy.
Nicole Toole is the CEO and founder of ECGO, a recycling solutions company that helps universities, municipalities and corporate offices reach their waste-zero goals.
With expertise on consumer behavior around recycling and sustainability practices, her work centers around leveraging her research for innovative solutions and effectively pitching these concepts to investors, organizations and institutions.
Blake Patton is the founder and Managing General Partner of Tech Square Ventures where he leads investments in enterprise software, marketplace and platform technology companies across the Super South. Under his leadership, the firm has invested in more than 100 early-stage companies and launched Engage, an innovative corporate innovation and enterprise startup accelerator program.
Marty Flanagan is the former Chief Executive Officer and Director of Invesco, one of the world’s leading investment management firms from 2005 to June 2023 and Chairman Emeritus from July 2023 until December of 2024. Mr. Flanagan joined Invesco from Franklin Resources, Inc., where he was president and co-chief executive officer from 2004 to 2005 and held various positions, including, Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer prior to that from 1993 until 2003.
This Super South Summit panel with Blake Patton, Founder of Tech Square Ventures and Marty Flanagan, Chairman Emeritus of Invesco emphasized the Southeast’s emergence as a high-growth hub for climate innovation and entrepreneurship. The discussion covered how coordinated civic, corporate and startup efforts have created a uniquely collaborative environment, enabling the Super South (stretching from Texas to Washington, D.C.) to evolve rapidly in venture investment, corporate innovation and sustainability leadership. Through examples like Tech Square Venture’s Engage platform and a strong regional ethos of collaboration, the panelists highlighted both the region’s momentum and its urgent need to expand climate tech investment relative to its economic output. The session closed with practical advice for participants to connect with and actively support the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Coordinated Corporate and Startup Engagement as a Distinctive Advantage
The creation of Engage is a critical differentiator for the Super South’s innovation ecosystem. Unlike typical fragmented efforts seen elsewhere, Engage brings together CEOs from Fortune 500 companies to collaborate actively with startups, sharing innovation agendas and accelerating access to markets. This model not only addresses the universal corporate struggle with innovation but also provides early-stage companies with first client opportunities, significantly enhancing startup success rates. The unique structure — with senior corporate leaders personally committing to Engage — ensures sustained organizational prioritization, a dynamic missing in most other regions.
The panel reinforced that venture capital availability directly correlates with economic and innovation growth. While the Super South now captures around 16% of the national venture capital share, it remains underrepresented relative to its 34% share of national GDP and particularly underserved in climate tech investment at only 7%. This disparity underscores both the progress made and the vast untapped potential. Venture capital acts as a catalyst for emerging climate innovations, and closing this investment gap will be pivotal to maintaining and accelerating the region’s leadership position.
Spirit of Collaboration as a Regional Superpower
A recurring theme across the discussion was the unique, deeply ingrained culture of collaboration across universities, corporations, startups and civic institutions. Unlike in many larger tech hubs where competition often impedes partnership, leaders in the Super South have intentionally fostered a culture where collective regional progress takes precedence over individual organizational gain. This collaborative spirit enabled initiatives like Engage to succeed where similar efforts elsewhere have failed, and it represents an intrinsic advantage for scaling sustainable innovation.
The panel emphasized the critical role of world-class research universities such as Georgia Tech in underpinning the region’s innovation ecosystem. Through entities like the Strategic Energy Institute and startup incubators like ATDC, universities not only supply a continuous pipeline of technical talent but also advance research in critical areas like energy systems, clean tech and climate solutions. The universities’ deep integration with corporate partners and startup accelerators creates a self-reinforcing cycle of idea generation, commercialization and scaling.
Corporate leaders increasingly view sustainability not simply as a moral imperative but as a business necessity driven by workforce expectations.
The new generation of talent demands that employers prioritize sustainability. Companies that lag behind will struggle to attract, engage and retain top talent, impacting their competitiveness.
While sustainability strategies may vary across sectors, the underlying principle remains constant: corporate success and sustainability commitments are now interdependent.
Access to Customers More Critical Than Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs
The panel highlighted that early-stage companies often need market access more urgently than investment capital. Entrepreneurs benefit most from connections to customers, pilot opportunities and validation through corporate partnerships. The Engage model’s success stems partly from recognizing this dynamic and designing interventions that accelerate customer access rather than just funding. Investors and ecosystem supporters are thus urged to prioritize customer introductions and strategic partnerships when assisting climate innovators.
Climate and energy sectors represent one of the most urgent and lucrative innovation frontiers. Similar to the seismic shifts seen in healthcare, energy transformation offers vast investment opportunities. The Super South’s diverse corporate base across logistics, manufacturing, energy, agriculture and finance provides unique vantage points for scalable, cross-sector climate innovation, reinforcing why sustainability is not only a societal necessity but also a compelling investment thesis.
A Region Poised for National Leadership
The Super South is evolving into one of the fastest-growing innovation regions in the country, driven by intentional collaboration between corporations, startups, universities and civic institutions. The success of platforms like Engage demonstrates the power of coordinated action, while the region’s talent pool, research capacity and growing venture capital activity position it for leadership in climate and energy innovation. Yet, as the panel emphasized, realizing this potential will require continued focus on expanding access to capital, deepening corporate-startup ties and nurturing the spirit of collaboration that sets the Super South apart. With momentum clearly on its side, the Super South’s rise in climate action and innovation appears not only plausible but inevitable — provided the ecosystem stays committed to collective progress.
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