Following my last post, “I aim to put more innovation into the front end of Energy“, I want to outline why I am focusing increasingly on this front end of the energy transition (FEE) within my innovation work.

For me, it is the ability to apply the “multiplier effect” to any discovery and validation that accelerates the understanding of where the potential growth and impact points of a new business opportunity can occur.

Today, we are all trying to piece together the Energy Transition.

The claim is that there are solutions abound to move us towards the Energy Transition we all need of clean, reliable, energy built upon renewables, but I honestly don’t share that current optimism; we actuaölly have an awfully long way to go in discovery, application and adoption.

In my view, we are struggling to get the level of momentum we urgently need into this energy shift, away from fossil fuels into a renewable, clean energy system.

I content it is not just the need to have the engineer’s insight into solutions, even if they might be the final arbitrators “go-to choice.” Still, it is to forge a strategic one, evaluating innovative options to broaden understanding and provide that essential and different perspective.

We all have a certain bias, often beliefs are well-grounded in past experience and approaches that WERE successful. Any transition is exactly that, it needs a clear recognition that what was often successful in the past is not the pathway to the future.

The energy transition needs a broad array of thinking; specialists, generalists, enthusiasts and passionate people that can move beyond their own view offering a “non-ideological confrontation” where solutions are both sustainable and accelerate a path to decarbonization and net-zero without any legacy or vested interest effect.

This innovator capacity that is needed to be ‘enforced’ requires greater insights and understanding of the alternatives, options, issues, and challenges. This is why I feel my multiplier approach offers a framework to help work this complexity through the energy transition in a supportive, systematic way.

As stated, my positioning is at the front end of the Energy Transition, building insights through the “eyes” of the strategic innovator.

• I provide evaluations and assessments of the front end of a transformation in discovery and validation that provide dedicated advisory and supporting services in knowledge and insights provision on energy-related matters.
• I break my business out into dedicated focal topics in “big transforming” points of impact, applying understanding and insights that are in my mind complementary, synergistic or clarifying new emerging intersections for growth potential that have impact and growth potential.
• The combination of innovation within ecosystem thinking and the design approach has ‘arrived’ capitalizing on the value points of digitalisation combining with technology, both in the Industrial IoT world and finding a growing place and pace in the Energy Transition that is having, in my view, a very different combination effect.

Offering a given value in the proposition

• The aim is to support the individual, teams, and organisations in their innovation and transition activity around the energy transition they intend to undertake.
• The aim is to advance further what they have in place or develop more significant innovation and transformation understanding and competencies, resulting in clients achieving positive and sustaining results from these transformation activities.
• The value for the client, so often time-starved, is that they can rapidly understand the latest thinking relevant to their focus areas, in thoughts, and insights around innovation, ecosystem building, or how the energy transition impacts them to identify new growth options or radically different stances in business positioning in the future.

The return on the investments made.

• The insights delivered offer a radically different view leading to a more balanced perspective, drawing in the external perspective, saving a significant amount of time in early resource investment. These insights and recommendations provide the triggering points for seeing fresh opportunities in growth.
• This fresh focus enables a more substantial client resource focusing on highly relevant aspects of building out and validating their future interest and value in new business options and energy design solutions.
• The value of applying this approach is by having access to a  greater depth of research and alternative understanding.
• Extracting knowledge, applying application and practice, gives clients the beginning of the “discovery and validation phase”, accelerating the client’s growth options in more structured ways.

Seeking problem resolution through discoveries.

• Through my depth of research across the needs of the energy, transitions it underpins and supports the changing understanding that is necessary.
• I provide insights and knowledge to clarify and quantify answers to many issues that lead to growing awareness and clarification on multiple energy-related issues. If I can’t provide the answers then I seek out the expert opinions that can.
• This focused research is associated with innovation, ecosystems, and our energy systems and the changing landscapes that transform and energise the existing everyday business into future ones that scope, speed a and scale the transition required.

My role is at this front end of discovery and early validation

• These insights significantly underpin my supportive advisory & mentoring services to a client. This dynamic environment nurtures my understanding of what is evolving and what impact and growth opportunities on a business by taking the innovators perspective into the assessment of the need of a clients energy transition
• My primary role is advising and coaching within these areas. The principal focuses then is to help support and build internal capacity, competencies, and capabilities to undertake any transformation journey.

Recognizing the value within the knowledge service provider

So my role, through this work, is to build the context and provide the content in useful knowledge and actionable insights. These provide the building blocks of the transition narrative to galvanise and achieve a common understanding of the Energy Transition being undertaken.

Then to support and help bridge the gaps in capacity, competency and capability recognition of the needs of having the innovators mindset, to get the Energy Transition journey onto a stronger momentum pathway of common understanding and realization of the tasks and issues to tackle.

Aspects of my knowledge and thinking through focus

I am a fairly enthusiastic researcher and writer that supports my work as a transition advocate for innovation, ecosystems and sustainability, specifically focusing on the industrial internet of things (IIoT) and energy systems that are radically changing our world.

A different combination effect- my multiplier framework

I see a combined effect of innovation, ecosystem design thinking, IIOT and energy as my work-to-be-done through different channels and services to stimulate and catalyse the energy transition we are all undertaking.

The vital “infusion” of innovation in thinking, approach and building this into the front end of energy provides a greater discovery structure and process that can greatly facilitate the changes, with more informed knowledge, insights and validation of a path to travel.

If you would like to delve into this further then go to innovating4energy.website for more details.

*** FYI-  I discuss and investigate about #energy, #ecosystems, #industry4.0, #innovation, and #sustainability. My dedicted posting and website references, if you are interested, are shown in the about section

The post My multipliers for innovation at the Front End of Energy first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

I see the front end of energy as the critical feeding-in point for the energy transition. So what does this mean exactly?

The front end of energy for me is the point of discovery and validation. It is the place I feel I can make the best contribution within the energy transition. The discovery is where the stimulus and catalyst point to take an idea to commercialization. 

This capturing, evolving, exploiting and exploring needs a clear management process and the understanding of how to undertake this. This needs a focused innovation specialist or a systematic approach to building those innovating capabilities and capacities.

I believe there is a real gap for many organizations involved in the Energy industry, often in the recognition, they are lacking a real lasting robust innovation capability, capacity and competency, as the sustaining way to help accelerate the Energy Transition journey.

There is often a mistaken belief that they are undertaking innovation as they simply react and copy others, not recognizing their own distinctive needs and never building their innovation capacity in systematic ways.

Innovation is vital to the energy system’s evolution, its need to be fully integrated and operational in design, and we need to further recognize its crucial role.

I certainly argue the systematic approach for the Energy transition

Innovation begins with discovery, then it moves through the innovation pipeline through its experimenting, validating, testing, often multiple trials, commissioning and eventual commercialization roll-outs.

The early you can do this validation, investigation, and conversation, my front end of energy, the better. We need to always relate, even “ground” the thinking and determine the real value and potential as a progressive journey and sometimes the external person can become a valuable partner in this process to keep the thinking on track.

Innovation is made up of many enabling technologies that support energy.

This complexity requires innovative approaches to be built in highly systematic ways. Its ultimate result is to offer innovation that can continually look for re-imagining new market designs and business models to stimulate the changes and solutions for our future energy transformation.

To undertake the Energy Transition requires a radical transformation in the way we supply, transform, and use energy. This requires a profound transformation in technologies, systems, and infrastructure. The complexity in the discovery, validation and lengthy process time to fruition is highly challenging.

Having a “system of innovation” enables the potential concepts to be captured in common, identified ways for all involved, the inventor, the developer and production groups to identify with the evaluation process.

When you establish a recognized system that others can follow as it is transparent to all, you can evaluate innovation activities through common “hurdle points” and evaluation criteria. It focuses on efforts that bring common identity and purpose.

What do I mean by a systematic process here?

Well, we know that Innovation often begins with discovery, a new realization something can make a fundamental change to what is existing. That concept then moves through the innovation pipeline, through its experimenting, validating, testing, often multiple trials, commissioning and eventual commercialization roll-outs.

That can be fairly complex and demanding. It needs a combination of solution understanding (researchers, engineers, designers) but it also needs a constant “mapping back” to the commercialization and to relating to the other stakeholders that can help facilitate or block progress.

There is nearly always a need to bridge the awareness gap or others to provide the validation. Knowledge is gained when it is shared and exchanged. I put a lot of my time into researching the energy transition.

Often external views can make a decisive difference in any discussions, they offer independence to balance the vested interests often defending what they have, and can show a different way to see new possibilities.

I have focused increasingly on the Energy transition, it fascinates me

Besides writing about innovation and energy on two dedicated blogs of innovating4energy.com and digital4energy, I recently launched a  website of innovating4energy.website, for my business offering.

I set out to offer the external perspective to those busy inside organizations by focusing on mapping out the future of energy and where they fit and what gaps they have in need to fill.

This role is to support, complement, and provide different value points to this thinking and eventual work. I see this as more advisory to complement their insights, more feeding into and augmenting their expertise with different points of value.

My role is to be a “translator” and take the innovator’s perspective looking for fresh opportunities, supporting and accelerating your existing ideas and concepts.

We need to relate, even “ground” thinking and determine the real value and potential. to leverage all that innovation offers the energy transition.

The post I aim to put more innovation into the front end of Energy first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Sustainability is one of the hottest topics in the business world at present. There is a hunt to find a new growth engine for a business and fundamentally show the pathway to a sustainable future.

A sustainable future that mobilizes action in searching for new economic thinking. One which incorporates a more circular model of management that builds a more purposeful recycling approach that has the objective to reduce the pressures on our use of precious minerals and resources and current consumption patterns.

• A sustainable design that turns today’s promise of decarbonization into a real, meaningful one, that delivers tangible and quantifiable solutions in product and the extended supply chain
• A sustainable design that shifts our thinking into a more equality-sharing model where respect for our planet, people, and environment is central to our actions. They become the core of a well-understood value system that recognizes diversity, inclusion and community development.
• A sustainable design that recognizes the “twin” pressures of moving as rapidly to a net-zero achievement as we can. Also recognizing that our planet is under great threat in nature, our plants, animals, land and water and any sustainability focus needs clear biodiversity goals, EQUAL or greater, than our emissions goals.

Each organization is evaluating and embarking on its sustainability journey.

I would caution the many that this “sustainability journey” is not a five-year response, determined by today’s existing management but a lasting one that transforms what we do and undertakes a transformation into new economic thinking and business models that “accounts” in radically different ways, where financial numbers follow planetary concerns.

We will need to re-learn much and map it out.

Our innovation needs to become well designed as “responsible innovation” with sustainability in all that we design, build and provide.

To get to this new design, we need different thinking.

We need a greater horizon projection. For me, this can come from engaging and mapping ideas that have sustainability within them into a Three Horizon Sustainability Framework. We learn, experiment and embed sustainability into our everyday thinking.

Fundamentally, we need to reduce risks and become far more transparent in our actions and achievements; we need to strengthen society and all stakeholders to trust that the sustainability pathway chosen is well thought through and highly connected.

We need to connect today’s business with that new sustainable one in the future. To plan and expand out the transition, so new opportunities have “grounded into them” solutions that are more accessible and affordable, ones that have this circular business model as central.

A future to have ambitions that are constant improving and challenging in designs, when technology advances can bridge the digital divide, improve purpose and leverage technology to give fresh meaning to the delivery of real sustaining purpose.

Any journey needs a clear sense of purpose or governance; it needs resources and discipline to bring the ideas and concepts to fruition.

The UN Agenda for Sustainable Development has Seventeen Goals. Still, it is the ability to translate the need for sustainability into a driving force that has at its heart the following aspects.

We need to rapidly adapt and layout our sustainability journey that has real intent and purpose.

1. Sustainability becomes the new core of the business
2. We turn the wake-up call into a well-designed journey
3. The investments made will have different ROI horizons
4. Strong credentials on sustainability will be highly valued
5. A new financial set of calculations will drive recognition of change
6. The urgency of the journey will become unrelenting.
7. Investors and stakeholders will become highly demanding on this issue of sustainability increasingly into the future.
8. The goals, milestones and actions must be seen to be highly calibrated.

To achieve this set of objectives, we need to communicate in written and highly interactive, visual forms. In my opinion, the three horizon approach provides the connectivity between where we are today and where we need to get to in the future and why the middle, horizon two, is so essential.

The essential understanding of Horizon 2 becomes crucial.

Within this three horizon framework, horizon 2 becomes the critical one to understand and manage.

FYI, this was the framing of my intent on focusing on the energy transition in this post to outline where I was explaining the importance of this horizon 2 within the energy shifts that need to occur.

“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. In this horizon 2, 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).”

Never underestimate this traversing across Horizon 2

I wrote this post “traversing across into horizon 2 for new breaking innovation” that gives a real dose of realities to attempt this radical journey from the existing business model and its value extraction into the new one.

Horizon two poses a real challenge within any management of our organizations.

Certainly, if many of today’s solutions provide current small bases of volume to warrant a change then we need a more incremental approach in making change. If they are highly complex and expensive to change or reconfigure and will need a substantial change then a more radical re-design is required.

There is a risk perhaps that no real additional meaningful profit from the investments made but this is where the more central sustainability core is determined as the necessity, Existing and future products and services all become real points of discussion. This often can be a hard sell across the organization.

Projects that focus on future work mostly are based on ‘best’ assumptions but do need future thinking application. Sadly, executives often expect to see the same ‘hard’ metrics being applied as the existing business. We ignore significant differences or avoid making shifts in product design and then this is a huge mistake. Design in the future needs a sustaining core.

We must move our thinking beyond the here and now, and push it into the future if we want to transform our thinking and build a sustainable business “formed”on new economic values and approaches.  This shift takes a very different mindset and where the three horizons framework can help significantly in balancing any sustainability aims, planning and portfolio management to undertake such a radical shift in mindsets.

I urge you to consider the three horizons as a framework that can significantly help your sustainability journey. I believe I can help guide and work with you on this if required.

*I offer a good amount of thinking about the three horizons approach, mostly for innovation.

The post The value of three horizon mapping for a Sustainability Journey. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.