From Ideation to Commercialization
Tom Flaherty is a partner with Strategy&, part of the PwC network, with over forty years of consulting experience. Most recently, he has led assignments related to standing up innovation programs and capabilities within utilities.
Utilities are quietly entering into the early growth stages of shifting from traditional commodity providers into innovative solutions architects. Companies are now focused on identifying new roles, markets, products, services and relationships.
With all the hype about innovation as the next challenge for the industry to master, executives are wondering whether their historical focus on continuously improving business execution was misplaced. Certainly, it wasn't, but this past focus on operations was undertaken with a different outcome in mind - namely plant or grid performance.
The focus moves from being reliability and cost-centered, to value and monetization-centered. This shift changes the emphasis from the pursuit of innovation for modernization to innovation for commercialization.
It also challenges the industry, because it has never been forced to embrace true commercial thinking from top-to-bottom within the enterprise.
Yet if the industry is to realize its aspirations to be at the center of the customer's energy decisions, it needs to master becoming a more commercial enterprise without abandoning its historic legacy of service.