I wrote a post on “Building an Inspiring Energy Narrative” and shared this on two of my posting sites, one exploring “Ecosystem thinking and design” and the other “Innovating the Energy Transition” and published the post here on EnergyCentral
Let me provide here a summary of the thinking, relating to building a different business approach to collaborations in the energy industry to foster great collaborations to drive innovation and accelerate the transition to a more sustainable and resilient energy system, from my research based on four of the biggest Energy organizations that do collaborate in part but not yet in greater collaborations.
By coming together they would be able to leverage their collective expertise and resources to achieve a shared vision for the future of energy, which they each do!
My view is this is shared here in a summary of my longer post
I am sceptical of individual energy organizations' pledges to move towards a carbon-neutral future. They argue that there is a limited amount of time to make this transition and that individual organizations cannot achieve this alone but are they open enough to alternative suggestions for how to overcome the constraints, are they exploring alternative thinking enough? I propose that one alternative (more radical) solution is to bridge the gap through collaborations at multiple firm levels.
I believe that there is a weakness in the ecosystem that deprives it of greater collective action and innovation to achieve a more accelerated pathway to the energy transition. My argument is that while there are many energy companies working on solutions within the energy transition, they are often working in isolation and struggling to get out of their "self-made" islands of knowledge. I suggest that applying ecosystem thinking and platform solutions could bring together a number of organizations to work in a broader, more ambitious innovation ecosystem of collaborations.
To explore this concept, I created individual profiles of four companies: Schneider Electric, Siemens (AG & Energy), and Enel. I investigated each company's sustainability profiles and innovation capabilities, as well as their reliance on internal processes and external collaborations. Then I also considered how the companies design, develop, and deliver new concepts, and examine the challenges they face in finding solutions through contests, research investigations, accelerator programs, and open innovation platforms, looking for commonality and synergies.
If we consider the limited cooperation between these four companies and begin to explore the mechanisms for collaboration, we begin to think of ecosystem collaborations. The use of a common platform suggests that a neutral platform could provide helpful, knowledgeable, and higher levels of neutrality and overcome often needless arguments about who takes the lead and is the orchestrator.
Besides finding the appropriate platform, however, I equally acknowledge that there are natural boundaries that any collaboration must overcome, such as competing priorities, intellectual property rights, organizational structures and cultures, regulatory and legal barriers, communication and coordination issues, and funding and resources. All offer significant obstacles to overcome but I believe it is “doable”. If you believe in the "need" to succeed at the energy transition then you have to be willing to open up your thinking too far greater collaboration.
The choice of these four companies does have a level of commonality in market focus and legal framework as potential areas for greater collaboration, as all have their Head Office within the European Union, where a number of significant obstacles in harmonization, incentives and collaborative mechanism are established and functioning for all involved individually with highly active European Union and country Governments engagements.
I also suggest that the opportunities lie in a number of “higher level” needs of common understanding and focus that are essential to transformation. These include Smart Grid development, Energy Storage, Grid Modernization and automation, and Electricity of transport. Cybersecurity and Data collaborations are also good examples where competition is transcended by energy solution needs that have common standards, potential to scale, collaborations with multiple stakeholders, and policy regulators that having this level of collaboration would command attention and respect.
Finally, I considered potential steps to support this ecosystem concept.
I suggested that building a concise narrative around this collaborative approach is necessary to consider the commercial arguments, social well-being, and environmental impacts to bring the opening value statement to a common point of entry/discussion.
The narrative is provided in the posts and considers mitigation, sustainable practices and behaviours, technical advancements, combining expertise and resources, and the combined "weight" of market leverage to enter new markets, extend existing ones, and expand the customer base.
So do take a look to discover the energy narrative, both here and/or here. Does the narrative make sense and put the needed business case?
Can we begin to gain some movement on these to undertake more challenging innovation ecosystem collaborations?
Do you think it is possible?