Across the Asia Pacific, the challenge for sustainability innovation is less about finding promising technologies and more about adoption. Many solutions can demonstrate technical performance, but far fewer can navigate the operational, commercial, and organizational realities required to scale across large businesses and multiple markets.
This shift is especially evident in Southeast Asia, where cross-border expansion often encounters practical barriers long before product capabilities become an issue. As a result, the real challenge is proving that a solution can be adopted at scale across existing workflows, supply chains, and operational realities.
For PepsiCo, that challenge helped shape the evolution of its APAC Greenhouse Program, a regional innovation platform now entering its fourth year. The newly launched IMPACT Edition shifts the focus from pilot-led experimentation toward structured integration and deployment by helping five returning alumni move from successful validation into commercial deployment, operational integration, and multi-market expansion.
In this TNGlobal Q&A, we speak with Ashley Brown, Chief Sustainability Officer for PepsiCo Asia Pacific and Vice President of Supply Chain for Australia, New Zealand and Asia, about why operational complexity remains one of the biggest barriers to scale, how integration-led partnerships are changing the shape of corporate-startup collaboration, and where ecosystem support is becoming essential to turning proven solutions into regional impact.
Why do many promising pilots fail to become long-term commercial deployments in APAC?
Many promising pilots fail because they are designed to prove that a solution works, not to determine whether it can be bought, integrated, and scaled within a real business.
That distinction is especially important in the Asia Pacific. The region is one of the most important growth markets for sustainability innovation, but it is also highly diverse across infrastructure, regulation, supply chains, consumer behaviour, and market readiness. A solution may perform well in a controlled pilot and still face challenges when it has to operate across different markets, partners, and systems.
For companies, the question quickly moves beyond “Does the technology work?” to “Can this become part of how the business runs?” That means looking at operational fit, unit economics, risk, compliance, impact measurement, and clear ownership within the business.
This is where many pilots stall. The issue is often not a lack of innovation or intent. It is that the pathway from proof of concept to procurement readiness has not been built early enough. Startups need to show that they can solve a sustainability challenge in a way that creates measurable impact, makes commercial sense, and can be adopted at scale.
That is the gap the IMPACT Edition of our APAC Greenhouse Program is designed to address. The focus is on helping sustainability startups move beyond pilot success by grounding solutions in real business needs, regional market realities, operational integration, and impact discipline.
How is the corporate innovation model shifting towards deeper operational integration? What does this approach offer startups?
Corporate innovation is shifting from testing whether a solution works in isolation to understanding whether it can be adopted inside the business.
That distinction matters. A successful pilot is not the same as a scalable deployment. For sustainability solutions, the real test is whether they align with business priorities, fit into existing systems, meet compliance requirements, demonstrate measurable impact, and have a viable commercial pathway.
This is how the APAC Greenhouse Program has evolved. Since launching in 2023 as a grant-based accelerator focused on circularity, sustainable agriculture and climate solutions, we have worked with 30 startups and supported more than 20 pilots. The program has moved from discovery to validation and now to integration.
With this year’s IMPACT Edition, we are focusing on five proven alumni solutions and assessing how they can move closer to day-to-day operations. Through the IMPACT Framework, we are bringing sustainability, supply chain, procurement, R&D, and operations teams in earlier, so startups are considered not only as vendors or test cases, but as potential operating partners.
For startups, this creates a much more practical route to enterprise readiness. They get exposure to real business needs, feedback from the teams that would use their solutions, and a clearer understanding of the technical, commercial, and procurement expectations they need to meet. It also helps them build internal relevance earlier, which is often what determines whether a pilot can become a long-term deployment.
The real shift is that we are not treating integration as something that happens after a pilot. We are building it into the model from the start.
What should sustainability-focused startups prepare before partnering with large regional companies, particularly if they want to move beyond proof-of-concept and achieve commercial adoption across multiple markets?
Startups need to come in with more than a good pilot story. They need to understand what it takes for a large company to actually adopt their solution.
In our experience, that means being clear about where the solution fits in the value chain, what problem it solves for the business, how the impact will be measured, and what it would take to implement it across different markets. A pilot can be run with a small team and a narrow scope. Commercial adoption is different. It involves procurement, operations, supply chain, finance, compliance, and the teams who will ultimately have to use the solution every day.
That is why we encourage startups to think like future operating partners. The most compelling sustainability solutions are not only better for the environment; they also make the business stronger. They help reduce waste, emissions or resource use, while improving efficiency, resilience or cost-to-serve.
That is the lens we are applying through the APAC Greenhouse Program’s IMPACT Edition. At PepsiCo, the ambition is to turn external innovation into something that can support real change across our value chain. Adiona is a good example in logistics, where better route optimisation can reduce distance travelled and fuel use. Takachar is another example, with its work converting agricultural residues into biochar and other products that can support climate outcomes and agricultural communities.
For startups, the message is simple: prove the technology, but also prove the path to adoption. The companies that are ready to answer both questions are the ones with the best chance of moving from proof of concept to long-term commercial partnership.
What role do ecosystem partners play in helping startups navigate regional expansion and unlock growth opportunities across APAC?
The region is not one operating environment. A solution that works in one market may need a different regulatory approach, commercial model, partner network, or evidence base in another. That is where ecosystem partners matter. They help startups understand what has to be true beyond the first deployment.
For PepsiCo, the Greenhouse Program is built on the view that sustainability innovation does not scale through one company alone. We can bring real business needs, operational context, and a route to test solutions within our value chain. But partners such as investors, research institutions, innovation platforms and industry bodies bring other forms of discipline: market knowledge, technical validation, capital readiness, standards awareness and access to wider networks.
That combination is important. It helps a startup move from having a promising solution to having a proposition that others in the market can understand, trust and adopt.
In the 2026 IMPACT Edition, the partner network is not there for visibility alone but to help reduce the friction between pilot success and regional growth. The goal is to help startups think beyond one project: what evidence another customer would need, what operating conditions have to be in place, which partners are required, and how the solution can be repeated responsibly across markets.
For sustainability startups that can make a real difference. It gives them a stronger basis for growth, and it gives large companies and investors greater confidence that the solution is not only innovative but ready for broader adoption.