These executives are energizing the power business with their persistence, ideas and pure gut instincts.
What is an innovator? Must he, or she, be an inventor? Or merely an idea-prone CEO with a knack for building a string of successful companies? Or could an innovator be both a scientist and CEO?
In this first-ever feature, Fortnightly has chosen innovators from all segments of the energy business. Innovators who, in every sense, have something to prove next year, whether that be seeing out the commercialization of technology or a leading corporate strategy designed to make competitors wonder who blew them by.
Size doesn't matter. Whether they're heading a $16 million or a $12 billion venture, it's drive and vision that makes the executive. These corporate officials clearly have what it takes to look beyond the usual and see what it will take to put their companies over the top.
Robert L. Aveyard,vice president and chief information officer, Conectiv Resource Partners
If you asked me to do a production line job where I had to do the same thing over and over again I'd get bored and start looking for ways to do it differently," says Robert L. Aveyard, Conectiv Resource Partners CIO. "It's always, 'Is there a way to do this better?'"
Aveyard each day looks for a better way to complete tasks, but his job at the Wilmington, Del. utility has much more variety than any production line. More challenges have been thrown his way via deregulation and the March merger of Delmarva Power & Light Co. and Atlantic City Electric Co., which formed a $2.5 billion enterprise known as Conectiv Inc.