AEP, Ameren, Entergy, Exelon, Southern
Leo Denault is the CEO of Entergy Corporation.
At the June 2019 Edison Electric Institute Annual Convention in Philadelphia, Nick Akins from AEP, Warner Baxter from Ameren, Chris Crane from Exelon, Leo Denault from Entergy, and Tom Fanning from Southern Company, joined Strategy& and Public Utilities Fortnightly for our third virtual innovation roundtable.
Strategy&: Bring us up to date on how the last couple of years have gone for your innovation efforts?
Leo Denault: Our innovation has become cultural, not just transactional or operational and our employees understand that we have been innovating for more than one hundred years.
Our company started with Harvey Couch signing a contract to burn sawdust to make electricity. We have come a long way from sawdust, through oil, coal, natural gas, and splitting the atom, so that the minute somebody touches a switch the lights come on. And that continuous innovation allows us to provide a critical service at a price point that is phenomenal.
We're in an industry where over 99.9 percent of the time everything works. It's been done so well that people just expect it. In our city and every other town in America, our employees are risking their lives every day to deliver electricity to our customers. Customer centricity is nothing new to our employees.
Our cultural evolution starts with our vision statement, we power life.