Atos is a global leader in digital transformation. Atos employees 110,000 across 73 countries with annual revenue of Euro 12 billion.

Atos holds the number one position in European advisory companies in Cloud, Cybersecurity and high-performance computing that provides end-to-end solutions to Orchestrate a wide array of Digital Solutions.

Why do I single out Atos for a post? There are several good reasons:

Firstly, I like its stated purpose “to help design the future of the information space” and Atos looks to contribute to the development of scientific and technological excellence.

Secondly, I have worked with, often exchanged views and shared from the work that a wonderfully knowledgeable person so often provides on such a diversity of subjects. I do recommend you should certainly follow Antonio Vieria Santos (@AkwyZ) who works within Atos in a roving, supportive role building community knowledge. We presently meet and participate in the Siemens #SIEx community together, and each time I find the opportunity to talk with him, I learn from him. He is a great teacher to engage with and passionate about diversity in opinion and knowledge sharing.

Thirdly, Atos has recently been ranked number 1 in sustainability performance within the IT services sector for the second year running, and they continue to push social responsibility, and this brings me to why I am writing this post.

Atos has made a significant commitment to achieving net-zero carbon emission for themselves by 2035, as have many others. Still, it is the leveraging of this sustainability journey of their clients towards decarbonization, security and digital inclusion that attracts me in a core purpose and need, that for me, makes for further investigation.

This commitment drew me in to investigate further.

I spent some time taking a deeper look at Atos and its positioning in the decarbonized digital services through its sustainability consulting capabilities. Atos recently completed the acquisition of EcoAct, a climate strategy consulting firm with a team of 160 climate experts. This acquisition further shapes a global Decarbonization Excellent Center to offer comprehensive delivery capabilities for clients and their climate ambitions.

My fourth reason came from my investigations and shared focus.

Fourthly Atos is looking to develop digital solutions to support decarbonization. They rightly state it becomes an important aspect is to challenge the existing and find new innovative ways to solve decarbonization issues across many tough areas. Atos decided this year on an IT challenge seeking out to develop digital solutions that will support multiple decarbonization initiatives to help companies and society as a whole tackle climate change.

I relate strongly to this as the #EnergyTransition is a core focus area for me, and I devote a significant part of my time researching, exploring and explaining this transition. If you are interested, go over to my dedicated posting site of www.innovating4energy.com – a transition in all of our lives. Increasingly our “collective” focus will be on this overarching need to decarbonize the planet.

My own views on the themes for Decarbonizing has been set in my agenda setting post if you care to read it.

Atos offers its first international student competition dedicated to technological innovation.

I really hope this is well supported, the challenge is vitally important to continue to accelerate the energy transition we are all undergoing. This is their first international student competition dedicated to technological innovation. Let me outline this here: Technological innovation to achieve decarbonization is vital.

The challenge closed for entry on 29th November 2020, so registration please go here

Background and challenge

The Paris Agreement sets out a global framework to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases, particularly Carbon Dioxide. This is especially true in the area of energy production and usage; by increasing the share of low-carbon energy sources, especially renewables, with a corresponding reduction in the use of fossil fuels.

They are asking students to develop a functioning application, mobile app, service or simulation to support industry, commerce or individuals in the drive for decarbonization. They are looking for interesting applications that could have immediate and impactful real-world applicability.

• In power generation and demand, how can we support a shift to nuclear, hydro, biofuels, geothermal, solar, wind and tidal forms of generation?
• In the area of power use and efficiency, perhaps local power generation, distribution, storage and community schemes can be investigated?
• In the production of steel and cement, which produces large emissions, are there ways that digital solutions can reduce or optimize the use of these materials?
• In agriculture and farming, we need to solve the large volumes of methane release. The use of inorganic fertilizers releases methane into the atmosphere. Additionally, livestock farming (particularly cattle) produces large volumes of methane. Can we reduce these emissions, or use digital technologies to make better use of waste methane?
• How can digital technology help to prevent the destruction of rainforests or aid in the recovery of deforested areas?
• In transport, how can digital technology support a shift from fossil fuels to electricity or hydrogen, maximise the use of public transport, car-sharing and rental schemes? Can this be extended to shipping or air travel?
• Can digital solutions aid the distribution and delivery networks supporting increased online product and grocery shopping, especially now that we’re living in a world so impacted by coronavirus?

The 2021 winning team will receive €10,000 to help them bring their app to the market and the two finalists respectively €5,000 and €3,000. Also The IT Challenge organizing committee will offer to all the members of the winning team and the two finalist teams the possibility of applying for an IT Challenge-fast track internship to work within Atos on subject areas relating to their projects.

You can follow the competition on Twitter at @atositchallenge

Finally a useful link to more on the competition: on More information about Atos decarbonization ambition

I can only wish Atos and those that take up this challenge good luck. The areas chosen are so vital to have all levels of innovative solutions. Finding imaginative digital solutions to decarbonization is so much part of our needs today in making this energy transition

The post Setting the right innovation challenge first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

 Reflecting on a rapidly changing business world.

The issue we must tackle today, is how we go about adapting to the changing world? One that will be able to take all the advantages of the changes all businesses are undergoing, how societies will be adjusting and responding. We are facing a time of unprecedented economic and social crisis but this is a time equally for seizing and sizing different opportunities.

We clearly need to find ways to navigate ourselves back into some (new) order; to stabilize the chaos we are in. What we first need to do is make sense of what is going on around us, we need to determine what actions to take and the level of action, resource and support each part needs. We are in a period of (great) change. How are we thinking about how to adjust, not just to the immediate challenges but the greater ones that are certainly heading our way.

Within business, the present crisis is offering a chance to make significant changes to how we operate in the future. I am not sure many of you feel the same, it seems disruption is in everything, in what we need to undertake, in what is coming towards us in change. We are challenged but we have ample signals to amplify and explore. 

Disruption actually has a common purpose, often far less sinister than promoted or we suspect, it requires us to re-equip and open up, as we learn to deal in this changing world where connections can emerge from anywhere at any time, offering a new ‘line of sight’ onto an existing problem to begin to break down the barriers and find new fresh ways forward.

These will be through different approaches to designing and extracting the potential value gained and these, in my opinion, will form around ecosystems and their management, through technology solutions provided by platform providers.

We need to respond quickly and in very different, highly collaborative ways. Digital offers unique, new ways to address many of our challenges everywhere. Our need is to explore and exploit, and we have to harness ourseleces, our organizations, through these new technologies and collaborative concepts to take advantage and leverage all that is possible.

 We need to engage in different ecosystems and participate in new platform learning to take advantage of the changes taking place all around us. To quote Chuck Robbins, the Cisco CEO and Chairman “We believe that no one company can deliver the full breadth of technology solutions that customers need at the pace the market requires”. It is through the increasing intensity of using data and a deep analysis where this growing need for broader collaborations becomes so essential.

Technology, innovation and digitalization are the combination effect that will move us forward in our changing business world. We can’t operate in isolation, we need to be far more highly collaborative.

Partnerships abound, not just within a specific industry but in cross-industry collaborations. Ecosystems need to form to take advantage of many rapidly emerging market opportunities. It is not just welcome to a world of ecosystems, it is learning to change from being exclusive owners into open collaborators, that build ‘greater value’ from the common need of working together, and many of these are increasingly cross-industry ecosystems.

Just recognize the changes we are undertaking in cross-industry collaborations are significant

If we recognize what it takes to build new transportation business models, it needs an ecosystem of public authorities, automakers, component suppliers, software providers and infrastructure builders to come together to make this happen

 The travel industry will emerge far differently in the months ahead, in its post-recovery from the ravages of Corvid-19. Within airports, train stations we are seeing a conscious integrating of all that makes up this travel hub, including connecting traffic updates, weather conditions, arrival and departures, airport shops, restaurants, hotels, parking terminals and flight or train understanding and on-line bookings. This will be rapidly advanced, integrated and providing a very different business model proposition. 

 Many of the changes that will emerge in the next twelve to twenty-four months will become more cross-industry and service ecosystems. The search is for synergies. It requires a host (platform provider), different apps, weblinks and consistent ways to integrate these so those using the airport or train station can navigate their way around their personal needs. It needs an ecosystem and platform management to bring this together.

We are increasingly expecting as consumers, uninterrupted connectivity, and virtual integration and that need for continued connectivitity will spur new value propositions for trechnology and AI to take over and manage more of your daily, repeative tasks . It is this constantly connecting-up that is constantly layering mini-ecosystems onto each other so experiences improve as these ecosystems connect and work out what is needed to be delivered.

If we look around we are seeing increasingly the cross-industry ecosystem exploding.  

We have new ecosystems that are building new value in offering mobile commerce, building digital into all that we undertake increasingly in retail, banking, and entertainment. We are seeing new energy solutions emerge in Agriculture, Energy, Utilities. We are seeing a ‘connected difference’ in the Automotive, Driving, linking to Postal services, electronic transfers, blockchain transactions, purchasing across most of our goods, both personal and in business and exploring concepts in Health solutions that require cross-industry collaborations.

We see electronic capital trading getting faster and faster by the application of data flows, analytics and software that automates the trading decision. We are connecting into Public Services to gain insight and seek new value. Manufacturing is connecting up through its Industry 4.0 drive. We have Artificial Intelligence increasingly working, either in the background or foreground for decision-making. We are building platforms and connecting up the individual ecosystems of (internal) knowledge into these new creators of value, based on collaboration, mutually shared interest and vision and in the co-operation that emerges around the extensive use of platforms and technology application.

The smartphone is to date, our greatest ecosystem, and platform, as individuals as it is all wrapped up into one personalized connected ecosystem and the phone is the platform. It is rapidly becoming the source of information, value generator and our personalized “dual world” as it learns what we need and is increasingly responding to mirror our world.

Just image the ecosystem of connectors we require within our daily lives, living in “smart” cities.

The opportunity to connect the providers of ‘hard’ services (energy, equipment, construction, utilities, etc) with our ‘soft’ needs (where to go, what we can do, order, where to park, what to do and see) requires huge collaborative efforts but the reward has significant benefits. Smart cities attract ‘smart’ people that attract ‘smart’ institutions and eventually ‘smarter’ business entities.

The connecting brainpower allows everything to manage their own personal speed of things, a flow that can potentially reduce redundancy and enhance engagement. The connections begin to reshape everything through the data; communications, public services, responses to crisis and opportunity, being aware. The smarter in the use gets increasingly channelled, as this increasing flow of data to analyze, target and coordinate life in the city, can allow for a better way for all to connect to that city and personally identify. It changes urban life as it involves citizens increasingly in shaping the future.A connected city.

This is a very different potential in the new business models for all involved. The period ahead is going to be hugh “reset” within ourselves, within the way we go about and organize work. A world built on increasing collaboration, cross-industry cooperations that has technology, digitalization and innovation at its core.

The post Adjusting to a changing world first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Connecting and collaborating opportunities for business seem to be really powerful networks of value-adding effect, for finding new economic opportunity. This calls for some radical rethinking of the existing business and deciding the design of the future business. We are at a critical point of change. Business needs to explore the future is far more highly collaborative ways.

This calls for thinking through a different designed structure for the business and different skills needed. The shifting from the current state to the future designed state is no easy task. It requires a radical redesign of the organization, as it significantly increases complexity and where any digital transformation has to center upon as the critical enabler to enable this shift.

Clarifying the new critical capabilities

It is identifying the critical capabilities and being adept and agile enough in learning from these, to embed them into the changing culture. There is a critical need to be technology savvy, digitally adroit, highly analytical, and fast to make the connections, to explore and exploit the ‘breaking’ opportunities. We are having to adjust our learning to have increased levels of higher human-centered approaches, through exploiting design thinking, to learn and adapt.

Design thinking can provide a different thinking-through perspective to manage in more complex environments, break down barriers, and overcome new hurdles to deliver new economic value. New economic value has to be ‘seen’ and believed in, so people can engage and work towards making the necessary changes. We are in need of exploring new ways to think, to empower, and explore. so as to push and extend the business ecosystem design. It needs to be both highly human and digital-centric.

We are attempting to integrate into new ways the increasing needs and capacities of people, to capitalize on a myriad of choices with technology options and find new ways for business success. The approach needs to work around that of being viable, desirable and feasible, as the new value combination for new innovation, one that design thinking contributes into. We are actually forging far more ‘upstream’ and trying to reverse the ‘downstream’ many of today’s business find themselves in, to regain real value propositions that can offer a more sustainable business future.

In the future, we need to build on different thinking: innovation ecosystem thinking

We have today built-in too many constraints. We are locked into an old model of building economic wealth. We need a new wealth-creating paradigm  Much of our present-day management is holding us back, it needs to radically rethink how it will organize and build its capabiities and capacity to evolve and collaborative.

Boards and Senior Management have a lack of time, as they are often too busy, focusing on the day-to-day they have precious little time to think about the future. They remain extremely nervous when they do not have clear lines of insight to make what they see as riskier decisions. Finally, they are struggling with their present organizational design to adjust and adapt to the changing external world, full of uncertainties. To dither, to put decisions off, to seek out more certainty is not a position of any strength, it is the catalyst to eventual destruction. We need to face these inbuilt constraints.We need to change our mindsets.

It is finding uniqueness that becomes increasingly important and comes from new knowledge, innovation investigation, validation, and outcomes and delivered in business ecosystems that offer new customer value, it builds greater value into capital. It is the amount of capital you invest that drives the potential and today, we are increasingly finding that Ecosystems and Platforms, formed around ideas that are often too complex to be developed by a single entity, are benefiting through collaborative endeavors.

Ecosystem thinking can have a very transforming effect. It opens us up to a highly fluid, changing world of possibilities full of interactions, sharing, and exchange. It can help allow you to match and possibly get ahead of all the volatility swirling around us. We can develop strategies built on emerging knowledge and innovations, that can grow out from a collaborating community.

The traditional confines of market boundaries are clearly breaking down and reforming around these ecosystems and platforms that connect partners and consumers in dramatically different. It is these Value-added ways, and that ‘intent’ is driving a radically different environment to manage within, one of building knowledge ecosystems, innovation ecosystems and business ecosystems that connect up and form the interconnected parts of the required ecosystem design.

Summary

What we all have to recognize is the value of breaking down long-standing boundaries is occurring with or without you. Yet we do need to consciously shape this in more collaborative ways. Barriers are needing breaking down, we need to recognize the need and value of coalescing around a networked ecosystem. The chances for greater, more radical innovation to grow the business comes from exploring mutual opportunities to capture new economic value.

As you open yourself up to collaborating you open yourself up for greater learning and from this you can reshape your business design to adjust to this changing reality we are finding within a business; the need for designing our separate entities of business into a connected set of business ecosystems, to offer greater growth.

The post We are searching for new pathways first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

“Innovation capital is the sum of all that promotes the development and changes required for achieving innovation outcomes, within one organization or its broader networked environment, for marketplace advantage.”

The capital of innovation has many moving parts.

“These are made up of the resources, processes, knowledge, and capabilities, that are constantly evolving and highly dynamic to build greater innovating capacity.”

“These build upon the capabilities of ‘sensing, seizing and transforming’ to build new capital that focuses more upon the dynamics within innovation, that provide the true value creation in successful outcomes in the final product, services or executing within business models.”

We need to value both “stocks and flows” in equal attention to build innovation capital.

The ‘stock’ of innovation capital can render different productive value outcomes, is a bundle of the firm’s resources/assets and holds the renewal capabilities and they possess attributes that make it a “strategic asset.”

Innovation capital is made up of many different assets that are often context-specific and interconnected, and this makes it hard to build without taking a broader, more holistic approach to developing your capabilities, capacities, and competencies to innovate. You ‘map’ and align these to fit your strategic goals and aspirations; these provide the basis for the “flows.”

Each company needs to build its own unique capital stock.

We have a pressing need to clarify a new ‘valuing model’ for building innovation capital, and each organization has a unique bundle of the firm’s resources and assets.

It is the ability to integrate, reconfigure, renew, and recreate these resources and turn these into new, more dynamic capabilities that build on a continuous basis the innovation capital.

This is one of my most important focus points to assist and aid organizations in their understanding “what makes up their unique innovation capital” and what needs to be added to deepen and strengthen this capital stock.

Building our stock then leads to the flow that then leads to building more stock. We need both stocks and flow.

Most of our capitals are learning capitals.

The more we strengthen our knowledge and value our people, the more we can generate new knowledge, build greater narratives, deepen discussions, make better connections, and build our interactions out across growing communities.

The more we discover, the more knowledge we gain and this leads up to determine potentially better decision-making that should, in theory, give greater confidence that our invested financial capital is in ‘good hands’. Our knowledge learning, the more dynamic, the more we search, absorb, called absorptive capacity and then diffuse, the more valuable it becomes.

The power lies in the linkages we can forge, in the acquisition, in assimilation and then into the eventual transformation that allows known knowledge to become new wealth-generating innovation.

My stated value position is…

I provide different framing techniques for helping to grow this necessary innovation capital and build the stock of the capabilities and capacities to enable and increase the dynamic flow of innovation activities.

I am a great believer in building the dynamics of innovation. when you appreciate what is dynamic you can really (finally) begin a journey that builds a far better sustaining future where growth and value creation become far more realizable.

Have you any idea of what makes up your innovation capital?

My reference site provides a basis for this to begin to explore and build a greater understanding of what makes up your innovation capital and its dynamic parts.

https://innovationfitnessdynamics.wordpress.com/

• Previously published or referred too on my associate innovation sites including this one on “innovation capital”

The post Defining Innovation Capital first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

To build a pathway to enabling more dynamic innovation capabilities needs to go through Nine Stages. These nine stages are, in my opinion, needed for developing an understanding of your innovation capabilities, so as to make them more dynamic and, as a result, to be at the top of your innovation game.

This “step process,” I believe, gets you to the point of understanding what innovation capabilities are a better ‘fit’ for the purpose, to deliver on your innovation needs on a consistent, repeatable, and evolving basis.

Building innovation capabilities take time; they are complex, highly structured, and multi-dimensional. Any structured approach to tackling innovation takes time and considerable commitment. Any learning involves sensing, seizing, and then transforming.

We are searching for what makes up the present system and what needs to be part of the future to create a ‘best’ innovation capability environment that is sustainable in the longer-term. Those that can be continually ‘orchestrated’ and constantly adapted to meet the strategic need.

We are striving towards a true ‘innovation coherency premium’ in design, knowing what makes up your core dynamic components. The outcomes are to know where to invest, what to dampen down and what aspects can evolve naturally and be ‘taken along’ as you focus upon the ones that are more dynamic and relevant to your innovation needs.

Each stage of this needs questioning and then answering as phases of the journey.

1. Getting Started – Understanding the Needs & Imperatives of Innovation Fitness

• Why we must travel this critical path for Innovation.
• The meaning of dynamic capabilities and innovation fitness landscapes
• Merging the theory with practical reality to produce new outcomes and positive results.
• Focusing on resources and performance – why is this important.
• The problem is knowing what we have and what we really need and seeing the differences.

2. The Fuel of Innovation Performance – the dynamics of innovation

• A sharper, clearer focus on innovation resources to meet the strategic need.
• What is known about resources to sustain, enhance performance?
• Knowing and aligning  your strategic criteria – for sound innovation approaches
• Getting innovation within the right context of your business
• Moving your resources in the right direction takes courage and decisive leadership.

3. Getting even more specific – quantification and qualification

• Recognizing the building of scale, change rates, and dynamics that happen over time and why we need to constantly build our innovation capabilities.
• Developing the resources to meet the need – structured, focused, clarified by bringing out the necessary discussion.
• An illustrative scenario for a directional innovation fitness landscape map
• Recognizing resources can come beyond the firm and then bringing these in successfully, in gradual steps. Managing within a more open environment.
• Achieving  mutual dependencies to support; recognizing the hindering ones
• Being aware of  the impact of different scenarios in the management of innovation allows for designing a flexible response capability.

4. Building the Innovation Fitness Machine – reinforcing feedback, identifying needs

• Recognizing the current status, spotting emerging patterns, seeing spaces and gaps, and identifying solutions.
• Beginning the ‘adaptive walk’ to get to higher fitness points needed to compete.
• Clarifying the complementary resources, looking to embed new routines quickly, and set up follow through approaches.
• Introducing natural tensions into the system to trigger ‘step change.’
• Resource dependence climate, culture, diversity, intensity, and uniqueness
• Reinforcing feedback – watching for dangers, managing the machine capacity, removing the brakes selectively
• Shifting your resources need not deplete or force other people to compete for them – working through the tensions within teams and silos.
• Matching resource dynamics with the innovation value chain & life cycle stages helps maintain momentum.
• Simulation modeling the ‘what ifs’ and ‘why.’

5. The Strategic Architecture – designing the system to perform as needed

• The step process for designing and executing the architecture design
• Diagnosing performance challenges and roadblocks – resolving, moving on
• Lining up the solutions is not a linear process and needs careful management.
• Addressing the effects of intangibles in the Strategic Architecture.

6. The Hard Face of Soft(er) factors – the hidden power of intangible resources

• Clarifying the impact of the intangibles and recognizing the time, climate, and conditions are significant contributors to innovation activities.
• The different rivalry types: internal and external, inter-department, inter projects, and working through resolutions to these.
• Reflecting feelings and expectations, addressing all the different needs
• Measuring the tougher parts of intellectual capital
• The real value of your intangible resources
• Recognizing the value of hidden innovation and spotting its occurrence

7. Entering into Competitive Battle – the Dynamics of Rivalry, the Uniqueness of You

• Recognizing, developing, capturing, transforming, avoiding, and outmaneuvering
• Your point of choosing what, where, how, and when to compete.
• Building capabilities that are unique to you and hard to replicate
• Building sustainability into the innovation equation as ongoing
• Extending the turf, exploiting the situation, pushing beyond, seeking partners.

8. Building and Testing Capabilities to Perform

• Measuring capabilities through different fitness levels and scale.
• Learning to build capabilities as ‘ongoing’ and evolving for changing needs
• Re-Structuring the process for dealing with the dynamics of change
• Knowing the points of impact on performance to enable recognition and reality
• Managing innovation performance progressively across the spectrum of business need through testing and extending capability learning.
• Building from personal to the team, to organizational learning, in measured steps
• Recognizing the role of leadership, achieving strategic alignment, and working on broadening out innovation competence at different organizational levels.

9. Keeping the innovation fitness wheels turning, keeping your eyes on the road

• Resolution of conflicting goals, control, and structure
• Dissecting conflicting positions, resolving the impasse
• Knowing the limits of human engagement
• Goals, controls, and measurements can dominate and strangle
• Keeping the measurements simple and clear
• Managing innovation as a critical strategic resource
• Merging the results into a greater alignment to Strategy and Approaches

The end result is looking to generate your innovation fitness landscape. If you need any coaching help, advice, or mentoring through this process, just get in touch

The post A pathway to building more dynamic innovation capabilities first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

We first need to recognize that there are twin forces at work, feeding off each other. We are facing greater disruption and an increasing innovation pace.

These twin forces are constantly seeking out for combining, relentlessly adding the new shape to our future. We are caught up in a very revolutionary period. The prospect of new innovation potential will eventually work through into the world of Industry 4.0 as a major game-changer “.

Innovation is ready for those accelerating and being fully committed to their 4IR journey. Then innovation can finally play its true part in discovering, leveraging and delivering new value and impact.

We have to recognize the days of simple product innovation are dwindling. where technology, digital solutions, greater customer insights, where a new breed of designers, engineers, scientists, and software talent are combining built through a platform and new innovation ecosystems thinking, are all emerging.

Seeking out a highly collaborative approach

This highly collaborative approach is building greater complexity into our final innovation offerings, yet it is providing increased customer value that is incr4easingly expected and needed, it is combining up separate aspects of a customer journey or societal needs, providing solutions to problems that require this combined thinking as consumers expect a complete buying experience.

We need to recognize that we are increasingly becoming reliant on platforms, networks, greater connected relationships that are working collaboratively in ecosystems. The collaborators are seeing the combined value and individual gain in this more open approach.

One very positive result: one of the more radical aspects of open innovations, the final product or service design is capable of winning the hearts and minds of many consumers, who value this combined solution and often are prepared to pay a premium for this connected experience/solution.

Solutions that are increasingly more adaptable, adjustable to personalization, positioned to readily respond to rapid shifts in trends or new technology or improved solutions.

Solutions that are focused on solving a customer’s complex problems with imaginative solutions, some of them totally unseen at the time, in ways not possible without embracing and connecting in the digital world.

There is a certain realization, a sort of reality dawns

The customer is increasingly at the epicenter of the economy. The products and services are enhanced through the digital capabilities that boost their value and worth. Innovation is the unlocking mechanism

New materials are making our assets more durable and resilient, and data and analytics provide the valuable feedback needed to build even better services and performance in the future. All this connecting and reacting is requiring new forms of collaboration, and we are seeing new types of organizations emerging. They are far more dependent on platforms and ecosystems and looking to leverage a broader collaborative environment to provide this level of innovation design

Innovation is benefitting from the 4^th Industrial Revolution

There is a real value in recognizing and delivering on the fourth industrial revolution, we can start to think outside our classic product innovation boxes. We can shift our often-linear thinking as Industry 4.0 is the revolution that connects all the parts. We can loop, explore, connect, build scenarios, test assumptions, build digital twins to just the product and manufacturing impact.  Recognizing the transforming potential of having fully connected digital factories will revolutionize how we manage innovation going forward. It shifts our thinking and the management of innovation dramatically.

The ability to have a more “rapid response, adaptive designs and flexible manufacturing” can align more to market shifts earlier. We can begin to design products that are more “digitally connected” that can be updated in the consumer’s premise or hand. We can enhance “their” innovation by shortening the time-to-execution and extending the product life cycle, we can build new potential through greater innovation design, based on increasing insight and collaboration.

As we break down the organizational inertia that has been stopping innovation it is through the Industry 4.0 approaches that will realize radically different benefits and imaginative solutions.

There are so many opportunities for innovation well beyond products and services. We can open up so many new possibilities.

We can deploy new approaches, seek out new skills, engage different talent, and utilize design and digital capability to realize and leverage the power of connecting all those involved. coming from industry 4.0 deployments.

Having an integrated, connected ecosystem thiscan offer us, for the first time continuous learning, deploying AI and Human ingenuity , we can tap into a network of talent through ecosystems and platforms designed for greater collaboration and exchange. We can reach far more into underserved markets through greater customer connections and engagement, we can co-design with them.

We can, by embracing 4IR, have available far more predictive and evaluation tools to help improve processes, to reduce or test risk, to prototype and experiment, partly engaged with customers in learning and adjusting design and value. We can build and connect different supply chains that read and react, we can create new ecosystems where we share a common goal and value, we can enable more agile systems that can adapt and respond to changes in real-time to reconfigure the ‘connected factory’.

Innovation emerges out of the Industrial 4.0 initiative in radically different ways to explore and exploit.

We are waiting for the fully connected factory and process so we can apply a very different digital set of innovation tools. Until then we have innovation being managed the current linear, disconnected way.

We fail to have a seamless set of connections into our industrial process world, into our designers, engineers, research scientists and more importantly our customers. It only arrives when we have digital connecting.  Until we all get the same “line of sight” innovation stumbles along its familiar “guessing game” derived of insight and underlying knowledge.

The quicker we can connect and build the fourth industrial revolution we can explore, build, and redesign our whole innovation process in end-to-end ways, fully connected up, transparent and highly responsive.

We can look towards managing more radical innovation design in ecosystems and networks, seeking to push existing boundaries. We can envisage, and explore new technologies and materials, that all can combine into the Innovation Revolution that follows the Industrial Revolution.

We need to transform the relationships between people, objects, technology, exchange, and space and through deploying the industrial revolution solutions we enter the real age of innovation.

We can begin to move to more infinite possibilities and solutions through marrying and connecting data and design and employing our collective imaginations.

The post Innovation needs the power of completing the 4th Industrial Revolution first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I have been consuming the latest flagship report, released today, 10th September 2020, by the IEA called “Energy Technology Perspectives 2020

The report’s comprehensive analysis maps out the technologies needed to tackle emissions in all parts of the energy sector, including areas where technological progress is still lacking such as long-distance transport and heavy industries.

It shows the amount of emissions reductions that are required from electrification, hydrogen, bioenergy and carbon capture, utilization, and storage. It also provides an assessment of emissions from existing infrastructure and what can be done to address them.

Within the work going into this report, the IEA has identified over 800 technology options that need to be further examined, explored, validated, and accelerated for the World to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. That is an awful lot of innovation to get us to a clean energy transition from where we are today.

The report is over 400 pages long and is framed as a guide book for all involved in the energy transition. The report not only shows the scale of the challenge but also offers vital guidance for overcoming so many of the issues and challenges identified today. As anyone knows the more you explore innovation and what it is trying to resolve, the more complex it becomes.

To cover the whole energy system what we have been identified today in technology options will multiply, adapt, change, and build out different solutions as we continue to learn and advance.

If nothing else do read the press release for this report HERE “ Reaching energy and climate goals demand a dramatic scaling up of clean energy technologies – starting now”

Accelerating Innovation through rapid innovation adoption cycles

There are so many aspects of innovation need within this report but one part I felt was worth highlighting as it suggests eight innovation approaches of rapid innovation cycles for the Energy transition. These are ways to look to accelerate a more rapid innovation cycle within the energy transition. I wanted to put these into a simple table as they make real sense of how we can tackle innovation within the drive towards a clean energy transformation

You can download this as a PDF Table of rapid innovation cycles for the Energy transition

Different approaches to more rapid innovation adoption cycles

This rapid innovation cycle approach is the work of IEA- all rights reserved.

The examples illustrated are ones chosen by IEA to help relate the attribute to the example of technology, innovation, or process change.

Within this extensive report on the innovation need to deploy clean energy technologies you get a deep dive through this Energy Technology Perspectives 2020. The report focuses on technology needs and opportunities for reaching international climate and sustainable energy goals. This flagship report offers vital analysis and advice on the clean energy technologies the world needs to meet net-zero emissions objectives.

Providing a comprehensive innovation understanding of the impact and relationship

It is a comprehensive report for anyone interested in how and why innovation is central to our lives as it has the major role to play in the energy transition we are all undertaking.

A journey to turn our energy into clean modern and more sustainable ways, as well as to move towards the eradication of harmful emissions caused by our industrial past we need this transition to hopefully give us a promising future of ensuring our (one) planet will be fit to habitat in decades to come.

In my view applying and harnessing all we know on innovation, research and development give us this (one) chance.

The post Energy technology needs more rapid innovation cycles first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

1. Firstly by exchanging fossil fuel hydrogen with renewable hydrogen for fertilizers and feedstocks
2. Secondly, exchanging coal and gas with renewable hydrogen for steel making and chemical production.
3. The Electrolysis method can bridge the gap between power and the industry sectors, increasing the value of electrons and provide the essential molecules.
4. The Electrolyzer can complement the intermittent renewable energy sources of wind and solar to form a complete energy source. Hydrogen can be stored, and the electrolyzer ramped up when you suffer variable weather conditions to offer continued energy, all based on renewable sources, solving the seasonal variations that wind and solar can have.

Hydrogen does the potential to tick all the boxes of the decarbonizing industry as well as be the alternative heat source fo building and through hydrogen fuel cells offer low-carbon mobility. Using renewable hydrogen can accelerate the shift to green energy and decarbonization as a replacement for fossil fuels. Finally, it has the potential to be substituted in many of the harder-to-abate industrial sectors reliant on hydrogen through steam methane reforming as well as compliment electricity and decarbonize the gas grids we presently rely upon.
Hydrogen is not an energy source but an energy carrier. It is versatile; it offers no greenhouse gases, particulates, Sulphur oxides, or ground-level ozone but does have a high Co2 intensity upstream if produced from fossil fuels such as coal, oil, or natural gas. To make it green hydrogen, it has to be green, and that requires production through water electrolysis.
So We Are At The Time for Ramping up the Electrolyzer
I want to return to the discussion that Armin Schnettler EVP of Siemens Energy had with Kevin O’Donovan here. He was asked, “what are the technical challenges with the (PEM) Electrolyzers?
The reply by Mr. Schnettler was mostly about working on the fundamental technologies of Electrolyzers as the critical needs to make Electrolyzers Industrial ready. He pointed out the PEM technology is presently not mature enough, and this needs more robust solutions.
 The list of issues to tackle was in Mr. Schnettler’s opinion:
1) Certainly, get the capital cost down of the Electrolyzer
2) Make the Electrolyzers more compact, in their size,
3) Make sure they have high levels of reliability to operate in industrial application environments for 10 to 20 years and
4) Scaling up the Electrolyzers from the existing 4 MW to the next “ten-factor step” that seems achievable every 4 to 5 years and deliver the 100 MW plant solution next.
5) Finally, to get to these 100 MW solutions as soon as possible and then to 1 GW.
It was here he put it: “it is moving from MW to GW as the challenge (and opportunity)”
Why is this scaling up so important?
Just imagine Siemens have only delivered their latest Gas Turbine, the Siemens 9000HL model recently in the UK to work in a combined-cycle plant. Weighing in at just under 1.1 million pounds (497,000 kilograms), it’ll rotate 3,000 times a minute and generate 593 megawatts of power at peak, likely for decades. That turbine could be argued is “the pinnacle of today’s combustion technologies.”( Bloomberg / Siemens).
All these power generation technologies are competing; all are focusing on not just efficiencies but finding fuel systems that support that technology solution. Electrolyzers need to get into the big league of energy generation, pure and simple, to compete effectively. The pricing of the finished product of Hydrogen has got to get far closer to what the fossil fuel alternatives can deliver today in efficiencies and effectiveness and are matured through well-established solutions and integrated designs.
The significant upcoming advantage for the Electrolyzer is the marginal unit of power generation is coming from a smaller and smaller source. In 2020, the median kilowatt-hour generated in the UK will come from a plant of 596 MW of capacity. In 2040, the median kilowatt-hour will come from a plant of only 40 MW of capacity. (Source: Bloomberg). The other is by using the Water Electrolyzer (PEM) it is better to combine with other variable renewable sources for a faster ramp-up and giving a totally carbon-free fuel or product solution that offers a clean, sustainable alternative.
The commercial competitiveness of the electrolyzer will depend on the ability to advance the underlying technologies. These I will be exploring in my next post.
The need is for technology improvements of higher efficiencies, less degradation, higher availability, larger cell sizes, higher operating pressures, less reduced critical materials together with this need for reduced material size (Armin’s compactness). 
 Getting to this, the plants will require a significant plant production capacity ramping up and becoming more automated. That plant ramping up will need more automation production of the Electrolyzer cell components, the cells, and stacks to build GW scale electrolyzer plants. Then you will have a set of different challenges at the installing site, where the cost of electricity becomes critical. Coupling low-cost renewable energy with Electrolyzers makes them viable.
So the push by Governments brings up closer to the tipping point of building a significant renewable Hydrogen business in the next decades. Already according to Wood MacKenzie, the green hydrogen pipeline more than doubled in five months from 3.2 GW to 8.2 GW of electrolyzer investments by 2030
The plan in Europe is to take the share of Hydrogen from less than 2% to 13-14% of the European energy Mix.
So as we all look to Electrolyzers as the solution towards offering a power source of Hydrogen it is 1) the technology developments needed to be well-mastered, 2) to build out capacity volumes to bring down unit prices, 3) we need to see GW scale to make them industrially attractive,4) renewable integrated electricity- hydrogen partnerships and 5) integrated project development, construction, and installation approaches, so these solutions can ensure electrolyzers competitive. And that is a long hard road to travel between now and 2030 to get the Electrolyzer the Real alternative to other power generation options.
Exploring this further
So we need to look a little more at the Electrolyzer and see if it is scalable in asset readiness, system design, and value chain developed to offer an Industrial shift to Hydrogen in these next 5 to 10 years.
To understand this readiness and the issues to be addressed, I decided to take a further, more in-depth dive into Electrolyzers. You will find my outcomes from my research and piecing different parts of the Electrolyzer puzzle together over on my dedicated energy transition posting site: https://innovating4energy.com.
I plan to explore and explain some of the significant obstacles to be overcome in ramping up today’s “pilot” electrolyzers into full-scale industrial-grade solutions. Electrolyzer solutions than can compete with other power generation technologies, ones that are very mature and will certainly not yield their established market space without a fight and some compelling arguments of the reasons to change.
A more in-depth review of Electrolyzers can be found on my dedicated posting site for all thongs of Energy Transition by clicking this link “Show me an Electrolyzer.“

The post From MW to GW’s of Renewable Hydrogen using Electrolyzers first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The level of innovation intensity within the Energy Transition is a fascinating one and one I continually place more and more a focus upon.

One really critical source of reference for tracking clean energy progress comes from the International Energy Agency (IEA). The recent reporting back on the development of the energy transition we are undertaking seems depressing reading. We need to accelerate innovation and technology adoption.

We are so off track for much of the Energy Transition. if we are going to get anywhere near the Paris Agreement, and the below 2-degree climate goal set by 2050, we need to focus even more on transforming our energy systems globally.

The IEA’s Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS) offers a pathway for the global energy system to reach three strategic goals: the Paris Agreement’s well below 2°C climate goal, universal energy access, and substantially reducing air pollution. The IEA assesses the status of 46 critical energy technologies and sectors and offers some general advice on how to get “on track” with this SDS approach.

Presently there is a rising concern the Covid-19 has knocked us off a path.

In the short term, the dramatic economic downturn has given rise to seeing air pollution levels drop during the “lockdown” months, but as was seen after the 2008 /9 financial crisis when the economy came “roaring back,” so did the carbon emissions.

There is significant pressure on Governments as they attempt to stimulate their economies. The fiscal stimulus should be tied to a firm commitment to moving towards a greener economy. At the moment, those that rely on fossil fuels are getting significant support to sustain their current activities, and it seems they are not required to commit to changing their reliance on their fossil fuel dependence.

That lack of commitment to change to a clean energy pathway is, in my opinion, plainly wrong as we have a finite period between 2020 and 2030 to make the energy transition to renewables unstoppable.

The IEA Tracking Focus gives us a top picture of the challenges and complexity of the Energy transition.

I think it is worth referencing here the way the IEA breaks down to track clean energy progress, it is a pathway that needs innovation to be central.

The IEA track the following aspects of the energy system; power, fuel, industry, transport, buildings, and energy integration. Presently they are well behind the position needed to achieve this less than 2 degrees C climate goal.

Just reflect how difficult this energy transition actually is. Not only in a wholesale, radical change to our energy fuel, generation, transmission, utilization, and consumption but in the levels of existing investment that need changing, writing off as potentially stranded assets (coal generation), or being replaced by new technologies based on renewables.

Assets investments are made are upwards of thirty years or more, depending on upgrade, use, and environmental conditions. This can even be twice the period, so dealing in achieving the momentum by 2030 and getting to deliver clean energy targets by 2050 is a relatively tough one in such a short time of thirty years. We need to “push” for change now, certainly in the next five years.

No one is going to stop investment in proven, tested technology, processes. Nor will they argue against infrastructure and energy delivery systems that are reliable, safe, and provide us secure, consistent, and dependable energy, products we rely upon, and jobs dependant on delivering services and products that are demand dependant on the energy system. The need, though, is to shift these from fossil fuel to renewables for a better, sustainable, and healthy world to live in.

A conflicting world full of complexity and tough challenges

We are faced with so many conflicting forces, the lobbyists arguing for an extension to coal, oil, and gas in subsidies or protection for energy security reasons. All Governments have to make tough choices, political ones where one party has strong community support as it backs coal or oil to know new technologies and renewables are driving prices down below their present energy sources.

Each of our economies has become “highly” dependent on existing fuel sources, and the energy security issues are beginning to dominate discussions. There is intense Lobbying to keep investments and make them more efficient is on one side. Then, on the other hand, backed by Scientists, Environmental fractions, and a growing public feeling is that we are feeling the effects of global warming.

This planet-warming is becoming unacceptable, the vast majority is beginning to accept that feeling our planet is under growing “stress” from the worldwide greenhouse gas emissions is forcing real change to happen. We must move beyond lobbying and debates and undertake a world order based on renewables that are sustaining and carbon and polluting gas-free for a healthier world.

To move away from fossil fuels and all of its associated risks and sustained investment over the last century-plus is a difficult one. Yet by relacing energy sources that are dependeânt on natural resources of the sun, wind and water are making for a compelling investment case. Those that become “first movers” can gain significant competitive positions. Economies and their future “fortune” can be radically altered by merely “hanging on” too long and seeing private investment shift countries seeking that new combination of modern infrastructure, low energy prices, and healthier environments.

I want to put the conflicting forces into some form of context by breaking this down using the IEA method of trancking clean energies.

Tracking Power

• The IEA is tracking power across the global; in the activities, investments, and positions of Renewable power , Solar PV Onshore wind, Offshore wind Hydropower, Bioenergy power generation Concentrating solar power (CSP) Geothermal Ocean power Nuclear power Natural gas-fired power Coal-fired power and CCUS in power (Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage)

The “sum” of where we are is today. Power sector emissions declined by 1.3% in 2019, while emissions intensity decreased by 2.5%. The IEA states, unfortunately, recent trends are not on track with the SDS, which requires that power sector emissions fall an average of 4% per year to 2030, and electricity emissions intensity drops 5.6% annually.

Tracking Fuel Supply

• Emissions from oil and gas extraction, processing, and transport rose marginally in 2018 to around 5.4 GtCO2-eq – approximately 15% of the global energy sector GHG emissions. Over half of these emissions (2.7 GtCO2-eq) came from flaring and methane released during oil and gas operations. The IEA tracks specifically Methane emissions from oil and gas and Flaring emissions

The available data suggests that there is a significant variation between the best and the worst-performing companies on these issues, so a vital task is to ensure that best practices and operational excellence on these emissions become standard across the industry as a whole. Considerably enhanced policy ambitions and regulatory efforts, better measurement and reporting, strong industry efforts, and investor-led support are needed to meet SDS targets for 2040, along with technological progress to improve the effectiveness of leak detection, measurement, and abatement.

Tracking Industry

• The principal industries, regarded as the “prime” polluters or emitters of high levels of Co2 and other greenhouse gases, are specifically monitored. These are Chemicals Iron and steel Cement Pulp and paper Aluminium and how CCUS in industry and transformation is performing.

Direct industrial CO2 emissions, including process emissions, declined 0.6% to 8.5 GtCO2 in 2018 (24% of global emissions), which is good news, but industry emissions must fall by 1.2% annually to 7.4 GtCO2 by 2030 – despite expected industrial production growth.

Greater energy efficiency, the uptake of renewable fuels, and research and deployment of low-carbon process routes, including CCS, are all critical. Governments can accelerate progress by providing innovation funding and adopting mandatory CO2 emissions reduction and energy efficiency policies.

Tracking Transport

• Transport covers all our sectors Electric vehicles Rail Fuel consumption of cars and vans Trucks and buses the sue of Transport biofuels to significantly switch fuels in the Aviation & International shipping sectors

Global transport emissions increased by less than 0.5% in 2019 (compared with 1.9% annually since 2000) owing to efficiency improvements, electrification, and greater use of biofuels. Nevertheless, transportation is still responsible for 24% of direct CO2 emissions from fuel combustion. Road vehicles – cars, trucks, buses, and two- and three-wheelers – account for nearly three-quarters of transport CO2 emissions, and emissions from aviation and shipping continue to rise, highlighting the need for a greater international policy focus on these hard-to-abate subsectors.

Tracking Buildings

• It always staggers me how much off the Co2 comes from our buildings. The IEA monitor Building envelopes Heating Heat pumps Cooling Lighting Appliances and equipment and Data centers and data transmission networks

Energy-related CO2 emissions from buildings have risen in recent years after flattening between 2013 and 2016. Direct and indirect emissions from electricity and commercial heat used in buildings rose to 10 GtCO2 in 2019, the highest level ever recorded.

Several factors have contributed to this rise, including growing energy demand for heating and cooling with rising air-conditioner ownership and extreme weather events.

Enormous emissions reduction potential remains untapped due to the continued use of fossil fuel-based assets, a lack of effective energy-efficiency policies, and insufficient investment in sustainable buildings. This is the really vital one that is in ALL of our hands to expect and encourage change.

Tracking energy Integration

• The ability to integrate our energy systems to combine fossil fuel and renewables has to accelerate, the whole issue of sector coupling, storage, and transmission is locked into this energy transition debate. Innovative solutions need to enable this energy integration and then transition into just renewables over the next thirty years.
• This is a really fascinating area to watch of leveraging Energy storage Hydrogen Smart grids Demand response and Direct air capture. These areas are needing deeper innovation funding and co-ordinating from policy support to fund experimentation, piloting, and extensive scaling out, all on demanding time scales.

To align with the SDS, industry emissions must fall by 1.2% annually to 7.4 GtCO2 by 2030 – despite expected industrial production growth. Greater energy efficiency, the uptake of renewable fuels, and research and deployment of low-carbon process routes, including CCS, are all critical. Governments can accelerate progress by providing innovation funding and adopting mandatory CO2 emissions reduction and energy efficiency policies.

The consistent reposting by the IEA along the 46 critical energy technologies or sectors does give a good focal point to direct innovation. What we see today, we are not on track, we have been arguably blown off track by the pandemic and the required economic stimulus required to “kick start” our economies back into “normal” life.

We do expect a return to some form of (new) normal of expecting growth, wealth creation, and jobs. Yet what is ahead of us will have even a more significant impact unless we address it, global warming.

This needs us to transform the energy systems globally so we can have a chance still to stop this planet from warming even further and giving us improved health, economic and environmental possibilities. The effects of the present Covid-19 surely give us all a wake-up call. It is how global failure has an enormous impact, and the concern is here that we are moving from one crisis into a longer, more dangerous one.

Unless we change the course of where we seem to be heading in fueling our energy needs with harmful emissions, we face rapid global warming that will not protect us. We have no second planet, and it is not just developing a vaccine to make us all feel safe, this is threatening human life as we have known it, pandemics included.

** the majority of this post has been drawn from the Tracking clean energies IEA report, published in June 2020 and brought out my own views or thinking

The post The Innovation Intensity needed in the Energy Transition first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

The majority of my recent work has been in investigating and building a comprehensive understanding of the #energytransition.

It is, to say at the very least, complex and challenging, but for me, satisfying and rewarding. Let me briefly explain how I am going about this and why. Why am I seeing the energy transition in different horizons and innovative ways?

My research ‘intensity’ (If I can call it that) had to become well structured, and I turned to some of my favorite, perhaps old fashion tools to capture my learning and give me my points of reference.

Included in this structured approach is different tools to capture and translate my progress. I have been building out extensive energy mind maps, constructing a dedicated posting site set up under “innovating4energy- a transition in all our lives” to ‘reflect’ some of my learnings and then to test that translation of my thinking, hopefully for others to relate too. Then building up the content within Microsoft’s One Note. Finally, lots and lots of saved files in an extensive folder on “the energy transition”.

The Energy Transition and building the new Smarter Infrastructure and Systems is a fascinating area within my present focus and future work. Here is why and how I am going about it:

The majority of my referencing has been building through dynamically expanding my Microsoft One Note structures.

I find One Note as flexible and offers the easy chance to change and shift around files as subjects and references built out, new links formed.

The One Notes are broken into Smart Infrastructure, and the whole Energy Transition system with the specific building of my research and knowledge understanding of Power Generation and their Sources, Transmission, and Consumption /User-end related.

AOD referenced here related to building up a growing atlas of Digitalization and what this means for stories and narratives. Each research area continues to be broken out into specific areas of interest or ‘housed’ in general reference files that cover off principal points of reference. Innovation within the Energy Transition continues to be “carved out” for faster referencing and relating.

My stated positioning and points of value in focusing on the Energy Transition

For me, the Energy Transition is one of the most exciting and challenging needs of the day. There is the urgent need for us all to identify and make the changes needed to deliver a better, cleaner world built increasingly on sustaining pathways.

My intent for going about this energy journey is stated as the following:

• I will focus on the value/impact of innovation within the Energy Transition (core)
• Build out my consistent focus on being a Business Builder and offer perspectives, opinions, and outlooks
• My belief that there are different aspects of activism to bring focus to this transformation, these needs articulating.
• The scope, pace, and directions of the energy change do need a real sense of action and urgency. I want to add some momentum that contributes to that.
• The broader perspective, putting content into context, giving knowledge and insight needs consistently framing and often revising as new insights, innovations, and breakthroughs occur. I want to understand and translate these.
• I see myself as the Outsider looking into the Energy World and still struggle in the world of Engineers, Scientists, and Policy Makers. My voice adds, perhaps, a common understanding that more of us can relate to, on the expertise offered.
• The position of a storyteller, building different narratives in my view, does advance the energy transition in distinct and tangible ways.
• The (absolute) needs within the Energy Systems will require multiple solutions and significant change, my aim is to relate these so we can make the transition from the existing to the new as it offers a better cleaner world or should.
• The significant potential for new market design, different business models, and system operation solutions offers a real business opportunity that needs triggering. Pointing to insights and shifts promotes this as opportunities to explore and exploit.
• The Energy Transition is one of today’s significant challenges in energy, climate, and for our planet.
• The fascination with new enabling technologies, exploring and exploiting these is full of creative spaces, rich in distinctive and radical breakthroughs, innovation is core to the Energy Transition to succeed and be transformed,

To sum up my three imperatives here.

• There is so much societal need for this transition, it needs framing and building differently.
• The Energy Transition is one of today’s significant challenges in merging energy, climate, and for the wellbeing of our planet.
• My desire is to add more impact, understanding, and awareness and to find ways to make a growing contribution.

My Energy Journey is being navigated across three-time and opportunity related horizons.

For many years I have been a powerful advocate for applying the three horizon framework and the thinking that should go int it, to offer a very effective way to “translate change” and gain a shared identification.

You can pick up on how I have evolved my thinking and built my approaches out on the three horizons by doing a “search” in the search box of this site.

Equally within my “insights and thinking,” there is a collection of thinking on The Three Horizon Framework for Managing Innovation. I always come at solutions or problems seeking understanding by applying my innovation expertise as it is “making informed change” that allows us to advance.

The Energy transition works well in the three horizon thinking. Let me provide the reason why.

• The current horizon (H1) identifies the existing prevailing or dominant system and the challenges to its sustainability into the future, i.e. the case for change in the energy system to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels (horizon 1). Innovation can lose the ‘fit’ aspects over time or has lacked that “galvanizing effect” as the external environment changes but needs recognition. It is unless you understand the current constraints, issues, and context you want to change, you struggle to change towards the new future.
• The third horizon (H3) is how to think through and move towards the desired future state, the ideal system you seek, and the emerging options that need exploring and exploiting. Central to this future state is shaping the solutions that can displace what you have. Often you can identify elements in the present (h1) that give you encouragement ( h3). Yet, it is keeping yourself open to all options that could lead to transformational change early on allows you to explore in multiple thinking ways, and it is exploring these openly, in highly collaborative environments give you the pathway to make the changes, based on a progression of business case deliverables.
• The second horizon (H2) is the one you need to move through. It is the place to let go of much of the past. Yet, it also allows you to build, experiment, and validate these solutions that seem viable for the future. It is in this horizon 2 that you identify how to draw out the nature of the tensions and dilemmas between vision and reality. You can separate the distinction between innovations that serve to prolong the status quo needed and necessary (keep the lights on, allow for a bridge from one fuel system (oil, gas, coal) to another that is more sustaining and based on technology breakthroughs and the renewables available (wind, solar, water).
• You work towards solutions that serve to bring the third horizon vision closer to reality. The H2 is the space of transition, often unstable and uncertain, called the intermediate space where views can collide and diverge but are the horizon mechanisms that traverse current needs and future positions. It captures the aspects that require the most significant attention and provides the dialogue to enable the transition from the existing to the (possible) future to be seen and appreciated by all the multiple players that have a vested interest.

So as I investigate, build and explore the Energy transition the three horizons as it becomes a highly valuable framing mechanism to take knowledge, insights and translate those into the different horizons and their needs, and this begins to determine the resources, investment, and challenging complexities this faces. You do work them in that order H1- H3- H2.

For me, it is a wonderful “dialoguing” framework we should universally adopt to relate to the bigger picture of the parts of the Energy transition. One that has the necessary granularity to get into the specifics of change and where they (logically) fit. I work through it in this way, which becomes logical as a dialoguing mechanism.

The idea for this came from the team over at H3Uni and from this, I developed my Three Horizon Seven Action Mapping Frame (not shown here) as the Energy Transition requires a pathway style approach.

My near-term building out of work relates to Decarbonization and, initially Hydrogen.

My intension over the next couple of weeks is to frame Decarbonization and as the “kick-off” to this is to build out the Hydrogen part into these three horizons in my thinking. By focusing on one specific energy vector (hydrogen) then will begin to inform the larger challenge of decarbonization and what needs to be in place for any successful transition to happen.

The other part of my thinking and work in these coming weeks is to build my ecosystem understanding of energy dependence with Hydrogen and visualize some outcomes by taking this approach. What will emerge is planned to be outlined on my dedicated “Ecosystems4innovators” posting site. There are so many multilateral initiatives being undertaken, and an ecosystem approach is absolutely necessary but often needs reaffirming as collaboration becomes vital within this complex Energy Transition.

In Summary

So building my Innovation intent has been central to me for twenty years, but this has constantly been ‘funneled down’ into recognizing the value of ecosystems as the business design for innovation is the way to go in the future. This collaborative ecosystem approach allows us greater potential to explore and deliver more significant value creation in unique relationships and networks. Now with my increased focus in the past two-plus years, the whole Energy Transition is becoming my future platform to apply my innovation learning and ecosystem thinking.

We are at an exciting time for translating the Energy transition. I am getting so much out of this that can be applied, built out, and does inform my advisory business and my knowledge sharing posting sites, activities that drive me each day.

The post Seeing the Energy Transition in Different Horizons and Innovative Ways first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.