👉 Background: Fortescue is the mining giant founded by Andrew Forrest in 2003 that today has a market cap of $67 billion. Fortescue is also working to develop green hydrogen technology, with goals to achieve net zero by 2030.

👉 What happened: Fortescue has announced that it’ll be axing 700 jobs globally and restructuring its business. It'll also be scaling back its green hydrogen initiatives because of high energy prices.

👉 What else: Now, Fortescue’s highlighted that it has no plans to abandon its green hydrogen initiatives but there’s still questions in the air about whether Fortescue’s investment in this new technology will actually reap results.

What's the key learning?

💡When a company chooses to innovate with new technology, it needs to balance current shareholder value with long-term growth potential.

💡A company is obligated to its shareholders, so if it wants to innovate, it needs to sell the vision to these shareholders. But that’s not always easy - investing in innovation is experimental and there’s no promise that it’ll pay off.

💡Fortescue's green hydrogen initiative has racked up over $2 billion in losses so far. But they're not the only ones struggling in this space. Japan has missed every target it's set for green hydrogen. So we’ll have to wait and see if this is a project Fortescue will actually follow through on.