Hi, I'm Matt Friend

I'm a business strategist with a focus on the energy transition.

I've spent 25 years helping organisations solve problems, with particular experience in innovation and growing new ventures. Since 2006 I've been dedicated to harnessing the power of business to address climate change. Since ~75% of emissions come from energy, that has increasingly meant working on driving innovation and new business models for a net zero energy system.

These days I live in Falmouth, Cornwall, and am head of strategy at Energy Systems Catapult, based in Birmingham. A brief potted history is below:

  • Grew up in Bracknell in Berkshire.
  • Spent four years at Magdalen College, Oxford. Spent my first year studying Chemistry. Decided that wasn't for me so changed subject to Philosophy and Experimental Psychology.
  • Got an MPhil in philosophy at King's College, London.
  • Worked for Gemini Consulting for four years as a strategy consultant, with a particular focus on growth strategy and investment appraisal.
  • Joined Diageo working in the UK and Africa. Worked on growth strategy and developing joint ventures. Spent a lot of time on planes to Cape Town and Nairobi, during which I realised the business problem I cared most about solving is How do we get business to address climate change? My answer - which I still believe - is that the way to do this is to get them to make more profit being zero carbon than high-carbon; and that the way to do that is to create products and services that are better than the incumbents, and which are also zero carbon.
  • Joined the Carbon Trust in 2006. Among other things I helped grow a series of new ventures including the Carbon Trust Standard and the world's first carbon footprint label.
  • After five years at the Carbon Trust, I left and became an independent consultant. I spent 10 years working with a range of clients, mostly helping them to develop and grow new businesses - focused on energy, carbon, and the the business implications of climate change.
  • Joined Energy Systems Catapult in January 2021 (during lockdown, which was...weird!). We're an innovation agency helping British innovators develop and commercialise new energy products and services, and supporting them to scale up and drive the global energy transition. I'm head of strategy, which means I work on broadly three things:
    • Working with the Exec and Board to shape the Catapult's strategy (what's our ambition, what innovation challenges should we work on, what's the best way for us to achieve impact);
    • Translating that into our business plan (what specific activities and investments do we want to make each year);
    • Evaluating our impact (what worked? are we having the impact we intended?)

Outside work, I've been studying capoeira for (gulp!) 20+ years. I was treinel under the brilliant Professora Paulinha Martins de Sousa of Capoeira Bemvindo. Nowadays a 5-year old daughter and an arthritic hip mean I'm no longer a treinel to anyone! But I train as often as I can with Mestre Brisa de Sousa and Contra-Mestre Figura of Grupo de Capoeira Menino Quem Foi Seu Mestre in Falmouth.