Chartcube now part of Anaplan

At @Anaplan Hub 2016 -- introducing Anaplan now w/ (Chartcube) collaboration & data discovery pic.twitter.com/fynGlddRhS

— Suman Talukdar (@stswww) May 10, 2016

Data Collaboration https://t.co/g8AN3SSGFB

— Suman Talukdar (@stswww) November 21, 2015

Chartcube - instagram of data

pitching Chartcube: the instagram of business data -- present, analyze, and share @chartcubesays pic.twitter.com/BqPtlWeepo

— Suman Talukdar (@stswww) May 8, 2015

hello Chartcube

Great to join the Chartcube team - reimagining how teams collaborate with data

Mojave Networks is now Sophos

Congratulations to the team on the acquisition!

We have joined forces with Sophos! http://t.co/oSkGyhHZLh
— Mojave Networks (@MojaveNet) October 7, 2014

More press:
Sophos Advances Cloud, Mobile, and Web Security With Acquisition of Mojave Networks Sophos PR - Sophos Advances Cloud, Mobile, and Web Security with Acquisition of Mojave Networks Sophos Acquires Mobile Security Startup Mojave Networks Sophos Acquires Mojave Networks, Grows Cloud Security Solutions Sophos' Cloud Offerings Expand w/ Acquisition of Mojave Sophos acquires security firm Mojave Networks Sophos Picks Up Mojave Networks To Fill in Missing SaaS Web Security Deployment Option Sophos completes acquisition of Mojave Networks 

on telco dealmaking

Great to share telcodealmakinglessons #TC32014 @ComputerHistory pic.twitter.com/6DcuuRFfSW

— Suman Talukdar (@stswww) October 11, 2014

presentation share: Keeping Mobile Security Simple, Dec 13, 2013

Keeping Mobile Security Simple - Shuman Talukdar, Amphion Forum SF 2013 by @stswww #mobilesecurity #datasecurity http://t.co/WQjcRe7axg
— Shuman Talukdar (@stswww) December 27, 2013

launch

capturing ideas and interests as they progress(ed)

Mojave team introduced

Humbled to be mentioned as part of our Mojave Networks funding announcement: 
New Funding From Bessemer Venture Partners

Mojave Series A announced

Awesome to see the Mojave Networks Series A announcements and great to be part of the team (http://t.co/RMZblUFrOu)! pic.twitter.com/vcwc58ftlw
— ShumanTalukdar (@stswww) November 18, 2013

Pictured is the team (from left to right): Me (Head of BD), Garrett Larsson (Co-founder & CEO); Brandon Salzberg (Head of Engineering); Omar Khan (Security Architect); Jesse Berman (Co-founder & CTO)

keeping mobile security simple

Submitting my proposal for Amphion Forum SF 2013:

Keeping Mobile Security Simple:  
My talk will focus on the need to simplify security especially for mobile.  Although threats are growing in complexity potential breaches more sophisticated track, and vulnerabilities increasingly difficult to identify, what customers need are more effective approaches to consume mission critical technologies in the face of accelerated enterprise mobile adoption.  This discussion will review key enterprise security technologies and present disruptive solutions to address the same problems."

list of presenters

hello Mojave (Day 1) Great to join the team at Clutch Mobile - rebranded to Mojave Networks!

Yammer Integrates With Multiple Security Partners and Adopts EDRM Standard for Data Export

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2012/oct12/10-29yammersecuritypr.aspx

Symantec Provides Day 1 Support for Windows Phone 8 to Protect the Mobile Enterprise

http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/symantec-provides-day-1-support-windows-phone-8-protect-mobile-enterprise

Harvard Business School series on US competitiveness

Symantec (eDiscovery/Clearwell) - again top-right on magic quadrant http://t.co/yxGxnk6s

— ShumanTalukdar (@stswww) May 29, 2012

green-sustainability innovation ideas follow-up publish

My Green (sustainable) innovation ideas/research summarized on the latest issue of The European Financial Review (http://t.co/H3mprDq4)
— ShumanTalukdar (@stswww) April 23, 2012

thoughts published: Green Innovations - The European Financial Review

Green Innovations – Green technologies must follow established rules of innovation and commercialization to succeed

Green Innovations – Green technologies must follow established rules of innovation and commercialization to succeed

By admin • Apr 18th, 2012 • Category: Economics & Politics, Innovation, Management, New, Sustainability

By Suman Talukdar & Michael B. Horn

Green technologies can be an engine of economic growth that leverages the investment dollars pouring into them. But to do so, these technologies must heed the same rules of innovation that drive all technologies, such as the ones behind the rise of personal computers, mobile phones, and software.

Four months after he took office, President Barack Obama proclaimed that green technologies would be the lynchpin of economic advancement. “We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors,” he said to workers at a wind energy manufacturing plant in Newton, Iowa, “or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity: The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.” Private sector investors in the United States have been similarly enthusiastic, as they invested a total of $8.9 billion in clean energy companies in 2009.¹

We, too, believe that green technologies can be an engine of economic growth that leverages the investment dollars pouring into them. But to do so, these technologies must heed the same rules of innovation that drive all technologies, such as the ones behind the rise of personal computers, mobile phones, and software.

“Green energy technologies can succeed provided that they avoid the four traps that trip up promising technologies: Technological Intractability, Systemic Complexity, Head-on Competition, and Customers Don’t Want It.”

Why Advanced Technologies Often Fail
There are generally four reasons advanced technologies fail to achieve commercial success.

Technological Intractability: The first reason is obvious: the technological approach itself proves to be intractable or unscalable. Most green energy technologies face some kind of significant technological hurdle. For example, the potential for generating energy from controlled nuclear fusion seems as far away as ever because fundamental technological problems repeatedly defy techniques to initiate and control this reaction. Most green energy technologies face some kind of significant technological hurdle. Solar cell technology has advanced, but it, too, still faces technological hurdles to improving efficiency.

Systemic Complexity: A second reason promising technologies fail is that they are rarely “plug-compatible” with existing value chains. For example, hydrogen-powered fuel cells promise a means of powering vehicles with no emissions except a trickle of water out the tail pipe. But fuel cells face an extremely long and challenging road to commercial acceptance, as they suffer from extraordinary systemic complexity. The ubiquity of the gasoline filling station is one reason that fuel cells will have a difficult time achieving widespread adoption. The infrastructure required to refuel a hydrogen-powered car does not exist and would require the coordinated investment of billions of dollars. Existing gasoline station equipment cannot be adapted to store and dispense hydrogen. This entire stock of equipment would need to be replaced. It is impossible to use an incremental approach in this situation. Hydrogen-powered cars can catch on only if hydrogen filling stations are liberally sprinkled across our roadways. Unfortunately, such stations will not exist unless there are a lot of hydrogen-powered cars as well.  It is a classic technological chicken and egg problem that can be overcome only through expensive government mandates and subsidies that would alter the fuel distribution infrastructure in a coordinated way. With such a large and thriving gasoline ecosystem in place, we are more likely to see adoption in technologies that either work with the existing system or bypass it entirely. Gas-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles are examples of technologies that improve fuel efficiency while working within the constraints of the existing infrastructure.

“Whenever new technologies compete head-on with established systems, challenges loom because of the cost and performance gaps between the new technology and the old.”

Head-on Competition: The third cause of the commercial failure of advanced technologies is head-on competition with established technologies. When a technology is forced into direct competition against an established foe, it will be adopted only if it is more cost-effective and performance-effective than the established technology in the markets where it is being used. This creates enormous barriers against commercial success. New technologies have much better success rates when they are aimed initially at nonconsumers—those who are not consuming the existing products or services because of lack of wealth, expertise, or access.  These non-consumers often embrace products with limited functionality or quality because they are superior to the alternative of no product at all.

Consider the path that the transistor took in overthrowing the vacuum tube. Throughout the early 1950s, most electronics products were made with vacuum tubes—devices the size of a child’s fist that consumed a lot of power. The mass of these devices meant that the televisions and radios from which they were built had to be large. Radios were placed on tabletops and televisions stood on the floor. All of the vacuum tube companies—the giants of consumer electronics, such as RCA, Zenith, General Electric, and Westinghouse—saw the potential of the transistor and spent hundreds of millions (in today’s dollars) trying to make the transistors good enough for the markets where vacuum tubes were used.

Meanwhile, some inventors saw the potential for transistors to create new markets altogether. The first commercial application for transistors was the germanium transistor hearing aid in 1951—an application where vacuum tubes simply weren’t feasible. Then in 1955 Sony introduced its first pocket radio, a simple, inexpensive, low-performance product. But Sony marketed its radio to teenagers, customers who were delighted to have a limited product because it was infinitely better than the alternative: no radio at all. While the vacuum tube companies continued to work on the technology, Sony introduced the world’s first portable transistor television in 1959. Again, it was a limited product. But by making a television so much more simple and affordable, an entirely new population of customers whose apartments or wallets were not big enough to afford an RCA TV now could have a television. Again, because the simple Sony product was infinitely better than nothing, these customers were delighted. New markets emerged as Sony wielded simplicity and affordability to compete against non-consumption. By the late 1960s, solid-state technology had become good enough that Sony and Panasonic could begin building large televisions and radios. Within about five years, customers had switched over to solid-state electronics, and every one of the vacuum tube companies vaporized.

Solar and wind power generation are green technologies that, at least in the developed world—in Europe and the United States, for example—are being deployed in competition with the existing electrical grid. As noted, whenever new technologies compete head-on with established systems, challenges loom because of the cost and performance gaps between the new technology and the old. Had no one come along to implement the transistor to compete against nonconsumption, who knows what the world would look like, as even today vacuum tubes are able to handle more raw power than are transistors.

Customers Don’t Want It: The fourth reason promising technologies fail commercially is that, although they provide technically sophisticated functionality, they do not help customers do a job they need to have done. By job, we mean a fundamental problem a customer needs to solve, including a specific result or outcome. If a technology helps users accomplish a job they are already trying to do in a superior way, it is far more likely to succeed. If a technology tries to solve a job with which a customer isn’t terribly concerned, it is likely to face headwinds.

“If a technology tries to solve a job with which a customer isn’t terribly concerned, it is likely to face headwinds.”

As a practical example, although we believe that the smart grid as a whole will be an important incremental innovation, certain aspects of it run afoul of the jobs-to-be-done concept. The term “smart grid” encompasses a set of technologies that allow both electricity producers and consumers to make better decisions about power use through real-time data. Portions of the smart grid system are important, evolutionary improvements to the existing power grid. Advanced smart meters benefit power companies by eliminating the need for manual meter reading, automating the billing process, and providing real-time detections of outages.² In general, the power grid is comprised of aging infrastructure that is in need of a major facelift. We believe that power companies will readily adopt smart grid technologies that effectively lower cost or improve performance.

Smart grid enthusiasts may be disappointed, however, as they find that the behavioral change from consumers is not as strong as they had anticipated. Although smart grid technology makes it possible for consumers to achieve savings, it does not ensure consumers will change their behavior. Consumers will change their behavior only if the technology helps them accomplish a job they were already trying to do. For frugal consumers who already monitor their power consumption to reduce their power bills, real-time price signals will be welcomed as a way to more efficiently manage their power bill. Unfortunately, not all consumers fall into this category. Those who are not looking for a system to help manage electricity usage will probably have little interest in smart grid technologies. They will not change their behavior because the technology does not help them do a job they already were trying to do.

Are green energy technologies doomed to failure for the reasons we’ve outlined? We don’t think so. What follows are some recommendations on how to develop and deploy green energy technology to maximize its chances for success both in the developing and the developed world.

Green Energy in the Developing World 
Solar energy is both less reliable and more expensive than traditional power generation, despite its desirable environmental impact. Given its limitations, would-be commercializers of solar energy should ask themselves: Where are there customers who would value a technology that generates unreliable electricity? The answer: the rural villages of India, Mongolia, Indonesia, Tanzania, and other developing nations. These are the locations where solar energy can be successfully commercialized because solar will be competing against nonconsumption of energy rather than a reliable, inexpensive power grid.

In contrast to wealthy nations where consumption of electricity and gasoline is ubiquitous, developing nations are an ideal place to commercialize green energy technologies. In these countries, there is so much nonconsumption that green technologies need only be better than the alternative: nothing. Just as Sony’s transistor radio gained acceptance among nonconsumers, green technologies will find enthusiastic receptions in the unconnected villages of the developing world.

Commercializing green technology in the developing world has the added benefit of contributing to the fight against carbon emissions. Currently, nearly half of carbon-dioxide emissions are from developing nations. And according to the U.S. Department of Energy, by 2030 developing nations will produce nearly double the carbon dioxide emissions of developed countries if their energy sources develop along the same lines. Green technology can enable both greater energy consumption and a cleaner path to economic development.

Although competition with nonconsumption will greatly aid its commercial success, green technology faces unique challenges in the developing world. First, technologies succeed best when the business unit responsible for developing and deploying the technology is also located where its targeted customers are. That way, the business unit will have the cost structure and managerial incentives that make pursuing “good enough” products at lower price points an attractive proposition. This is the classic path of disruptive innovation in which a new technology initially gains share at the low end of a market and eventually finds applications in increasingly larger and more attractive markets.

The second requirement for success in the developing world is to sell a product that provides a full solution for a customer need. In the developing world, it may not be enough to sell solar panels. Such a product may be of little use to a village with no electrical infrastructure or appliances. Rather, it is important for companies to deploy a technology that is tied to an application. d.light Design, which is based in India but was founded in Silicon Valley, illustrates the importance of understanding customers’ circumstances. Rather than just offer a lamp in a place with unreliable energy or offer a raw solar cell, d.light bundles its lamps with solar panels fit for consumers’ energy requirements, which are small—often around 0.5 watts. d.light Design has been successful to this point, as it has distributed 1.7 million lamps to rural Africa and India and raised venture capital financing to continue developing its business.

The third requirement for the developing world is that companies may need to integrate their activities across a wider spectrum of the value chain. In many bottom of the pyramid (BOP) countries, a well functioning sales and distribution infrastructure with wholesalers and retailers does not exist. As a result, companies that usually rely on channel partners to go to market, may find a similar strategy will get them nowhere in the developing world. In these regions, companies may need to take on sales and after-market servicing to develop their markets.

Green Energy in the Developed World 
Green energy adoption faces more daunting challenges in the developed world. With a convenient, low cost, and pervasive energy infrastructure in place, green technologies must prove themselves more affordable or better performing to displace their competitors. We believe that there are some spaces in which green energy technologies can succeed and thrive in the developed world, but they must comply with the rules of innovation. As a case study, let’s look at the Electric Vehicle.

We believe electric vehicle manufacturers should ask themselves a question similar to the one we posed to solar energy advocates: Where are there customers who would actually value a car that won’t cruise very far or go very fast? The electric vehicle (EV) contains certain limitations that will prevent it from winning in head-on competition with traditional vehicles. Remember, to win in head-on competition, a technology must be either less expensive or better performing, and the electric vehicle is neither. Despite undeniable progress, no manufacturer has succeeded in bringing the cost of EVs below that of traditional sedans. And even if EVs reach cost parity with gas vehicles, their performance limitations remain. Battery technology caps an EV’s range at 100 miles between recharges. Because a full recharge takes 8 to 12 hours, EVs cannot be used for long trips, which make up an important part of the job-to-be-done for which consumers hire a car.³ Furthermore, most EVs accelerate slowly and have maximum speeds well below the 80 mph that consumers typically demand. These limitations have held back the commercial success of pure-play EVs despite the existence of government subsidies and other such policies designed to make these vehicles more attractive to consumers.

We believe there is set of customers who would actively seek out a car with both limited range and acceleration. The parents of American teenagers have precisely the job to be done for which an electric vehicle would be a perfect match. These parents want to allow their teenagers to transport themselves to and from school, work, and friends’ homes, but nowhere else. They would actuallyprefer a car that does not accelerate quickly or drive on freeways. To complete their appeal to this market segment, however, EVs need to be priced cheaply so that affluent families could plunk down cash to buy it, just as they pay cash for the used Honda Civic they now buy for their teenagers. Again, this is good news for EV manufacturers, as they can offer a bare bones version of their vehicles and not worry about their performance relative to standard sedans. Compounding the good news for manufacturers is the fact that by getting a product in the market, they will incrementally improve their EVs and slowly close the performance gap with gas-powered vehicles. In this way, a low-priced EV could disrupt the predominance of the gas-powered vehicle, just as Sony’s transistor radios disrupted vacuum tube radios.

“With a convenient, low cost, and pervasive energy infrastructure in place, green technologies must prove themselves more affordable or better performing to succeed in the developed world.”

Although a real market for low-cost electric vehicles exists, it is unlikely that EVs will achieve substantial market share for some time. Disruption often unfolds at a glacial pace, especially in an industry like autos with high capital costs and long design-to-production cycles. For that reason, the primary mode of competition in the auto industry will continue to be a sustaining one. By sustaining competition, we mean that competitors will continue to try to best each other within the framework of well-established technologies by incrementally improving performance or reducing costs. Hybrid technologies will likely be a critical part of this.

Conservation in the Developed World
As long as green technologies follow the rules of successful innovation, they will be adopted readily in the developed world. The problem is that the developed world’s existing energy infrastructure is so cheap and so convenient that it creates large barriers to adopting new energy technologies. And with few nonconsumers of energy, there is hardly any space in which green technologies can take hold organically. To the extent government-mandated conservation efforts play a role, they will succeed best where they align with the interests of entrenched stakeholders.

The world is clamoring for cleaner and more sustainable sources of energy. Green-energy technologies can contribute to that effort. Yet our research into innovation and technology commercialization cautions us that the development and success of these technologies must conform to well-established rules. Developing and deploying green-energy technologies in the places where they can succeed commercially from the outset is critical.

About the author
Suman Talukdar is an experienced global business development executive for Silicon Valley technology companies and a graduate of Harvard Business School.

Michael B. Horn is the co-founder and executive director of education of Innosight Institute, as well as the coauthor with Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.
Reference
1.Venture Capital 2009 Investments in Cleantech Fall 50% to $2.6B as Investors Shift Focus to Energy Efficiency,” Ernst & Young press release, Feb. 8, 2010.
2.Michael McNamara, et. al, “Clean Technology Primer,” Jeffries & Company Research, Sept. 2009.
3.Shai Agassi’s EV service provider company, Better Place, attempts to solve this problem through its network of battery switching stations, but this effort suffers from significant upfront capital costs.

on bilingualism

Pick up a new language -- The Benefits of Bilingualism: http://t.co/Niug1XyD

— ShumanTalukdar (@stswww) March 26, 2012

vision of the digital native

Symantec RSA Keynote - vision of the digital native http://t.co/mkePABsy

— ShumanTalukdar (@stswww) March 12, 2012

participating at Rice panel on engineering

http://engr.rice.edu/eventslist.aspx?EventRecord=19624

interesting -> ( mobile + facebook + Vegas + catchy jingle ) carrier promotion in India http://t.co/VAVVFed via @youtube

— ShumanTalukdar (@stswww) September 12, 2011

200 Countries, 200 Years in 4 minutes - A view into a converging world

A clear approach to understanding global growth:

implications of 7 billion

Seven Billion: http://t.co/Yov7AKw6
— ShumanTalukdar (@stswww) October 25, 2011

technology transfer to latin america

Los abogados, enfrentan los expedientes de la mano de la tecnología http://bit.ly/erdbET #ediscovery #clearwell

— Clearwell (@clearwell) March 18, 2011

http://www.lanacion.com.ar/1356618-los-abogados-enfrentan-los-expedientes-de-la-mano-de-la-tecnologia

eDiscovery news - New York Times perspective

E-Discovery In The New York Times http://bit.ly/hOUu4g #ediscovery #nytimes

— Clearwell (@clearwell) March 17, 2011

Picking Green Tech’s Winners and Losers (SSIR)

Picking Green Tech’s Winners and Losers (SSIR)

Picking Green Tech’s Winners and Losers

Unless clean tech follows well-established rules of innovation and commercialization, the industry’s promise to provide sustainable sources of energy will fail.

By Clayton M. Christensen, Shuman Talukdar, Richard Alton, & Michael B. Horn | 7 | Spring 2011

On April 22, 2009, four months after he took office, President Barack Obama proclaimed that green technologies would be the linchpin of economic advancement. “We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors,” he said at a wind energy manufacturing plant in Newton, Iowa, “or we can confront what countries in Europe and Asia have already recognized as both a challenge and an opportunity: The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.”

Private sector investors in the United States have been similarly enthusiastic, investing a total of $8.9 billion in clean energy companies in 2009.¹ This is a sizable sum, but it does not guarantee that green technologies will provide a sufficient return on investment. Both the public and private sectors spent billions of dollars developing the market for corn-based ethanol over the past 20 years before a consensus emerged that ethanol would not solve the economic and environmental problems it targeted.

A similar story may be playing out in the solar cell industry, as evidenced by Massachusetts’s experience with Evergreen Solar. In 2007, the state invested millions of dollars to entice Evergreen to build a new plant near Boston. The plant did create 800 manufacturing jobs, but the excitement over the deal eventually soured. As solar cell prices plummeted from late 2008 onward, Evergreen faced mounting losses and saw its stock price crater from $15 to 80 cents. Then in January 2011, Evergreen announced it would close its factory and shift production to a joint venture with a Chinese company in central China—this after $43 million in assistance from the government of Massachusetts.²

Massachusetts’s experience should serve as a cautionary tale about investing in green energy. If governments pour large subsidies into green technologies, they run the risk of backing technologies that, like ethanol, are fundamentally flawed. Solar power is a similarly flawed technology if it is deployed in competition with the existing power grid.

We believe there is a better way to evaluate, invest in, and deploy green energy technology. Our research examines the drivers of successful innovation and illustrates how these drivers can yield a set of predictable rules that govern the success of new technologies. We also have developed a set of factors that predict the failure of a new technology. Green energy technologies, just like those that drive personal computers, mobile phones, and software, must follow the rules of innovation and avoid its pitfalls.

For our purposes, green energy technologies are those that either harness power from renewable, sustainable sources or seek to reduce adverse human impact on the environment. Many of these technologies also hold the potential to contribute to energy independence. We include such technologies as solar, wind, and geothermal power, biofuels, and smart power grids, as well as hydrogen and electric vehicle propulsion. In order for these new sources of energy to have the widest possible implementation, investors, technologists, and policymakers must understand not just their potential impact but also their commercial viability. Many technologies can be successful if they are deployed according to sound innovation theory.

WHY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES OFTEN FAIL

There are generally four reasons that advanced technologies fail to achieve commercial success: technical challenges, systemic complexity, head-on competition, and because customers don’t want it.

Technical Challenges

The first reason is obvious: The technological approach itself proves to be unworkable or unscalable. The plasmodium parasites that cause malaria, for example, evolve so quickly they have defied eradication by conventional immunological techniques. And similarly, the potential for generating energy from controlled nuclear fusion is still far away, because technological problems repeatedly defy techniques to initiate and control this reaction.

Most green energy technologies face some kind of significant technological hurdle. Solar cell technology has undoubtedly advanced, but it still faces technological hurdles to improving efficiency. Similarly, battery technology, which is critical for electric vehicles, is coming up against natural chemical boundaries. Fuel cells, elements of the smart grid, and wind turbines all run into technological problems.

Systemic Complexity

A second reason promising technologies fail is that they are rarely “plug compatible” with existing value chains. Hydrogen-powered fuel cells promise a means of powering vehicles with no emissions except a trickle of water out the tail pipe. But fuel cells face an extremely long and challenging road to commercial acceptance, as they suffer from extraordinary systemic complexity. The ubiquity of the gasoline filling station is one reason that fuel cells will have a difficult time achieving widespread adoption. The infrastructure required to refuel a hydrogen-powered car does not exist and would require the coordinated investment of billions of dollars. Existing gasoline station equipment cannot be adapted to store and dispense hydrogen. This entire stock of equipment would need to be replaced. Hydrogen-powered cars can catch on only if hydrogen filling stations are liberally sprinkled across our roadways. Unfortunately, such stations will not exist unless there are a lot of hydrogen-powered cars as well. It is a classic technological chicken-and-egg problem that can be overcome only through expensive government mandates and subsidies that would alter the fuel distribution infrastructure in a coordinated way. With such a large and thriving gasoline ecosystem in place, we are more likely to see adoption in technologies that either work with the existing system or bypass it entirely. Gas-electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles are examples of technologies that improve fuel efficiency while working within the constraints of the existing infrastructure.

The refueling station problem is a well-known barrier to hydrogen adoption, but the systemic problems associated with hydrogen production may be even more troubling. Hydrogen does not naturally exist on the earth in the form required for fuel cells. Ironically, the most common form of producing it is to separate hydrogen molecules from natural gas, which produces harmful carbon emissions. The other option to produce pure hydrogen is through electrolysis, which breaks down water into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The problem with this method is that even if large-scale electrolyzers were technologically practical, such machines would require large quantities of electricity. With renewable electricity generation still limited, the only cost-effective way to power an electrolyzer would be from fossil fuels, again defeating the purpose of hydrogen-powered vehicles.

Without sufficient capacity of renewable electricity generation, hydrogen-powered vehicles will not solve any environmental problems. For fuel cells to make sense, the entire system of electricity generation must be substantially modified. And perhaps even more daunting: Should this feat be accomplished, every subsequent step in the value chain would require a wholesale redesign of its existing infrastructure. We are quite certain hydrogen fuel cells will find limited success in displacing gasoline-powered engines.

Head-On Competition

The third cause of the commercial failure of advanced technologies is head-on competition with established technologies. When a technology is forced into direct competition against an established foe, it will be adopted only if it is more cost-and performance-effective than the established technology in the markets where it is being used. This creates enormous barriers against commercial success. New technologies have much better success rates when they are aimed initially at nonconsumers—those who are not consuming the existing products or services because of lack of wealth, expertise, or access. These nonconsumers often embrace products with limited functionality or quality, because they are superior to the alternative: no product at all.

Consider the path that the transistor took in overthrowing the vacuum tube. Throughout the early 1950s, most electronics products were made with vacuum tubes—devices the size of a child’s fist that consumed a lot of power. The mass of these devices meant that the televisions and radios from which they were built had to be large. Radios were placed on tabletops and televisions stood on the floor. All of the vacuum tube companies—the giants of consumer electronics, such as RCA, Zenith, General Electric (GE), and Westinghouse— saw the potential of the transistor and spent hundreds of millions (in today’s dollars) trying to make the transistors good enough for the markets where vacuum tubes were used.

Meanwhile, some inventors saw the potential for transistors to create new markets altogether. The first commercial application for transistors was the germanium transistor hearing aid in 1951—an application where vacuum tubes weren’t feasible. Then in 1955 Sony introduced its first pocket radio, a simple, inexpensive, low-performance product. But Sony marketed its radio to teenagers, customers who were delighted to have a limited product because it was better than the alternative: no radio at all. While the vacuum tube companies continued to work on the technology, Sony introduced the world’s first portable transistor television in 1959. Again, it was a limited product. But by making a TV so much more affordable, a new population of customers whose apartments or wallets were not big enough to afford an RCA television now could have one. Again, because the simple Sony product was better than nothing, customers were delighted. New markets emerged as Sony wielded simplicity and affordability to compete against nonconsumption. By the late 1960s, solid-state technology had become good enough that Sony and Panasonic could begin building large televisions and radios. Within about five years, customers had switched over to solid-state electronics, and every one of the vacuum tube businesses vaporized.

Solar and wind power generation are green technologies that, at least in the developed world, are being deployed in competition with the existing electrical grid. As noted, whenever new technologies compete head-on with established systems, challenges loom due to the cost and performance gaps between the new technology and the old. Solar and wind power are no different. Both are more expensive than the existing grid, and both have performance deficiencies related to weather conditions. Even with significant government subsidies to encourage adoption, the percentage of total electricity derived from wind and solar in the United States remains tiny, illustrating the barriers these technologies face to displacing the existing grid.

Customers Don’t Want It

The fourth reason promising technologies fail commercially is that, although they provide technically sophisticated functionality, they do not help customers do a job they need to have done. By job, we mean a fundamental problem a customer needs to solve, including a specific result or outcome. If a technology helps users accomplish a job they are already trying to do in a superior way, it is far more likely to succeed. If a technology tries to solve a job with which a customer isn’t terribly concerned, it is likely to face headwinds.

The rise of digital photography offers an illustration of how consumers will change their behavior in response to new technology, but not the fundamental job they are trying to do. When prints were the only way to view photos, people had the best of intentions to arrange photos in albums, but the vast majority of prints were viewed once, then placed in a shoebox. Despite this tendency, most people would ask for double prints so they could mail the best photos to a family member, not knowing beforehand which prints would turn out well. Once digital cameras were fully adopted, consumers changed their behavior, but not the fundamental job they wanted to perform with photos. Now, the killer app for photos is e-mail. Despite all the systems for online photo albums, the dominant consumer behavior is to attach photos to an e-mail for sharing. The technologies for online photo albums were always going to be challenged as they tried to perform a job that most consumers weren’t trying to do. The challenge is not in changing consumer behavior, but in changing the job that consumers are trying to accomplish.

Although we believe the smart grid will be an important incremental innovation, certain aspects of it run afoul of the jobs-to-be-done concept. The term “smart grid” encompasses a set of technologies that allow both electricity producers and consumers to make better decisions about power use through real-time data. Portions of the smart grid system are necessary, evolutionary improvements to the existing power grid. For example, advanced smart meters benefit power companies by eliminating the need for manual meter reading, automating the billing process, and providing real-time detection of outages.³ We believe smart grid technologies that lower cost or improve performance will be readily adopted by power companies.

But smart grid enthusiasts may be disappointed as they find that the behavioral change from consumers is not as strong as they had anticipated. A subset of smart grid technologies are intended to provide electricity users with price signals to help people manage their power consumption more efficiently. These technologies envision a home in which a consumer, seeing the high cost of electricity from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the summer, will turn down his air conditioning, turn off lights, and lower the temperature in the fridge. The potential savings from this technology could be substantial—as much as 30 percent of a typical consumer’s power bill.

Although smart grid technology makes it possible for consumers to achieve such savings, it does not ensure that consumers will change their behavior. Just as we saw in the photography example, consumers will change their behavior only if the technology helps them accomplish a job they were already trying to do. For frugal consumers who already monitor their power consumption to reduce their power bills, real-time price signals will be welcomed as a way to manage their bill more efficiently. Unfortunately, not all consumers fall into this category. Those who are not looking for a system to help manage electricity usage will probably have little interest in smart grid technologies. They will not change their behavior, because the technology does not help them do a job they already were trying to do.

Are green energy technologies doomed to failure for the reasons we’ve outlined? We don’t think so. What follows are recommendations on how to develop and deploy green energy technology to maximize its chances for success in the developing and the developed world.

GREEN ENERGY IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD

Solar energy is both less reliable and more expensive than traditional power generation, despite its desirable environmental impact. Given its limitations, would-be commercializers of solar energy should ask themselves: Where are there customers who would value a technology that generates unreliable electricity? The answer: the rural villages of India, Mongolia, Indonesia, Tanzania, and other developing nations. These are the locations where solar energy can be successfully commercialized, because solar will be competing against nonconsumption of energy rather than a reliable, inexpensive power grid. Just as Sony’s transistor radio gained acceptance among nonconsumers, green technologies will find enthusiastic reception in the unconnected villages of the developing world.

Commercializing green technology in the developing world has the added benefit of contributing to the fight against carbon emissions. Currently, nearly half of carbon dioxide emissions are from developing nations. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, by 2030 developing nations will produce nearly double the carbon dioxide emissions of developed countries if their energy sources develop along the same lines. So green technology can enable both greater energy consumption and a cleaner path to economic development.

Although competition with nonconsumption will greatly aid its commercial success, green technology faces unique challenges in the developing world. First, technologies succeed best when the business unit responsible for developing and deploying the technology is also located where its targeted customers are. That way, the business unit will have the cost structure and managerial incentives that make pursuing “good enough” products at lower price points an attractive proposition.⁴ For example, when the management of GE’s medical imaging business was largely located in the developed world, it focused on producing the most advanced and highest margin CT and MRI scanners possible. Once GE created an autonomous business unit in China, it was able to develop a low-cost ultrasound machine that had great benefits in rural China. Furthermore, as GE continued to develop these products, it began to find applications for them in the developed world, opening up large markets for its innovative products.

The second requirement for succeeding in the developing world is to sell a product that provides a full solution for a customer need. In the developing world, it may not be enough to sell solar panels. Such a product may be of little use to a village with no electrical infrastructure or appliances. Rather, it is important for companies to deploy a technology that is tied to an application. D.light design, which is based in India but was founded in Silicon Valley, illustrates the importance of understanding customers’ circumstances. Rather than just offer a lamp in a place with unreliable energy or offer a raw solar cell, D.light bundles its lamps with solar panels fit for consumers’ energy requirements, which are small—often around 0.5 watts. Their products are far better than commonly used kerosene alternatives, because they are significantly safer, are more durable, and provide far better light. D.light design has distributed 1.7 million lamps to rural Africa and India; it continues to develop its business.

The third requirement for the developing world is that companies may need to integrate their activities across a wider spectrum of the value chain. In many of these countries, a well-functioning sales and distribution infrastructure with wholesalers and retailers does not exist. As a result, companies that usually rely on partners to sell and distribute their product may find a similar strategy impossible in the developing world. In these regions, companies may need to take on sales and aftermarket servicing to develop their markets. One successful approach is the creation of a network of rural entrepreneurs who sell a company’s products to friends and family. D.light design has developed such a system to increase its reach.

GREEN ENERGY IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD

Green energy adoption faces more daunting challenges in the developed world. With a convenient, low-cost, and pervasive energy infrastructure in place, green technologies must prove themselves more affordable or better performing to displace their competitors. By and large, the only way green energy has been able to meet that standard is through government subsidies that bridge the gap between actual cost and grid parity. Although a small segment of consumers actively seek renewable energy sources out of concern for the environment, the battle to win the hearts and minds of hundreds of millions of developed world consumers will not be won quickly enough to solve our energy and environmental problems. We believe that there are some spaces in which green energy technologies can succeed and thrive in the developed world, but they must comply with the rules of innovation.

One of the green technologies that can find a market is the electric vehicle (EV). The EV contains certain limitations that will prevent it from winning in head-on competition with traditional vehicles. Remember, to win in head-on competition, a technology must be either less expensive or better performing, and the electric vehicle is neither. Despite undeniable progress, no manufacturer has succeeded in bringing the cost of EVs below that of traditional sedans. And even if EVs reach cost parity with gas vehicles, their performance limitations remain. Battery technology caps an EV’s range at 100 miles between recharges. Because a full recharge takes eight to 12 hours, EVs cannot be used for long trips, which make up an important part of the job-to-be-done for which consumers buy a car.⁵ Furthermore, most EVs accelerate slowly and have maximum speeds well below the 80 mph that consumers typically demand.

We believe there is a set of customers who would actively seek out a car with both limited range and acceleration. The parents of American teenagers have precisely the job-to-be-done for which an electric vehicle would be a perfect match. These parents want to allow their teenagers to transport themselves to and from school, work, and friends’ homes, but nowhere else. They would actually prefer a car that does not accelerate quickly or drive on freeways. To complete their appeal to this market segment, EVs need to be priced cheaply so that affluent families could plunk down cash to buy one. Again, this is good news for EV manufacturers, as they can offer a bare-bones version of their vehicles and not worry about their performance relative to standard sedans. Compounding the good news for manufacturers is the fact that by getting a product on the market, they will incrementally improve their EVs, slowly closing the performance gap with gas-powered vehicles. In this way, a low-priced EV could disrupt the predominance of the gas-powered vehicle, just as Sony’s transistor radios disrupted vacuum tube radios.

Although a real market for low-cost electric vehicles exists, it is unlikely that EVs will achieve substantial market share for some time. Disruption often unfolds at a glacial pace, especially in an industry like autos with high capital costs and long design-to-production cycles. For that reason, the primary mode of competition in the auto industry will continue to be a sustaining one. By sustaining competition, we mean that competitors will continue to try to best each other within the framework of well-established technologies, incrementally improving performance or reducing costs.

In industries where sustaining competition dominates, hybrid technologies are likely to be adopted. This is because hybrid technology enables exactly those incremental performance or cost advantages that allow companies to win a head-on competition while remaining within existing systems of use. In the automotive industry, we have already seen hybrid vehicles, such as Toyota’s Prius, make significant inroads as fuel efficiency becomes an increasingly important basis of sustaining competition. Such vehicles do not suffer from any of the problems of systemic complexity that hydrogen- or battery-powered vehicles face. They operate wholly within the existing automotive infrastructure, not requiring the infrastructure to bend to its needs. Hybrid vehicles also may compete very effectively in a head-on manner by being more convenient, if not eventually lower cost. Although current hybrid technology cannot yet win in head-on competition with gasoline vehicles, hybrids are far more likely to be adopted in head-on competition than are pure-play electric vehicles. We are particularly optimistic about the coming generation of plug-in hybrids, which will propel cars up to 40 miles on electricity before requiring the gasoline engine to kick in. This solution provides the vast majority of everyday driving needs on electricity alone, while preserving the flexibility to take longer trips. Early models will not be cost competitive, but as the technology improves and scale advantages arise, cost competitiveness may well be achieved, especially if gasoline prices continue to rise.

CONSERVATION IN THE DEVELOPED WORLD

So long as green technologies follow the rules of successful innovation, they will be adopted readily in the developed world. The problem is that the developed world’s existing energy infrastructure is so cheap and convenient that it creates large barriers to adopting new energy technologies. And with few nonconsumers of energy, they offer hardly any space in which green technologies can take hold organically. This is why governments in developed countries must play a large role in formulating and enforcing conservation mechanisms to reduce energy use.

The recent move by some governments to phase out the incandescent lightbulb is a good example of the kind of conservation measures that are required. The incandescent lightbulb traces its history back to Thomas Edison. These bulbs produce light by heating a filament until it glows inside a glass bulb. Although the technology has served the developed world well for more than a century, it is terribly inefficient in its use of energy. Up to 90 percent of all the energy used in a lightbulb is wasted as heat, with the bulb producing only 15 lumens per watt. By contrast, a compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL) produces 50 to 100 lumens per watt, and the energy savings more than make up for a CFL’s increased cost ($3 per bulb vs. 50 cents per bulb for incandescents). If a consumer were to spend $90 on 30 CFLs for her house, total energy savings could range from $440 to $1,500 for the five-year life of the bulbs.⁶ The United States has now mandated that the incandescent lightbulb be phased out of the U.S. market in 2012. Experts have estimated that if everyone in the country switches to CFLs, it will eliminate the need for 30 coal-fired power plants, and will save an amount of electricity equivalent to that used by all the homes in Texas each year.⁷

Government-mandated conservation efforts succeed best when they align with the interests of entrenched stakeholders. In the case of the lightbulb, manufacturers find the mandate attractive as CFLs represent a higher priced, higher profit margin product than incandescent bulbs. Consumers also stand to benefit from the energy savings reaped from CFLs. By contrast, California’s attempt to establish quotas for electric vehicles in the early 1990s was challenged from the beginning. As the quotas applied only to California and EV technology was so expensive at the time, it would have been very difficult for automakers to earn a profit on vehicles produced in such low quantities. This ran counter to their natural interest to produce higher volume, higher margin vehicles. The resulting industry opposition eventually caused California to retreat from its proposal. We don’t argue that government should cater to powerful interests, only that it should be prepared for a much more difficult path if conservation mandates create large burdens for industry.

It is undeniable that the world needs cleaner and more sustainable sources of energy, and green energy technologies can contribute to that effort. Yet our research into innovation and technology commercialization cautions us that the development and success of these technologies must conform to well-established rules. It would be a mistake for governments to pour large sums of money into technologies that will have difficulty finding commercial acceptance. But that is precisely the path many governments appear to be following. A better way to develop and deploy green energy technologies is to incubate them in places where they can succeed commercially from the outset.

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Clayton M. Christensen is the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. He is best known for his book The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business,a study of disruptive technologies and their impact on business.

Shuman Talukdar is a business development executive for Silicon Valley startups and a graduate of Harvard Business School (email: st at inspiredvc.com).

Richard Alton is a senior researcher at the Forum for Growth and Innovation at Harvard Business School.

Michael B. Horn is the co-founder and executive director of education of Innosight Institute, as well as the co-author with Clayton Christensen of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns.

Notes

¹ Ernst & Young, "Venture Capital 2009 Investments in Cleantech Fall 1 50% to $2.6B as
Investors Shift Focus to Energy Efficiency," Feb. 8, 2010.

² Keith Bradsher, "Solar Panel Maker Moves Work to China," The New York Times, Jan.
14, 2011.

³ Michael McNamara, et al., "Clean Technology Primer," Jefferies & Company Research,  Sept. 2009. 

⁴ These institutional dynamics are more fully documented by Jeffrey Immelt et al., "How GE Is Disrupting Itself," Harvard Business Review, October 2009.

⁵ Shai Agassi's EV service provider company, Better Place, attempts to solve this problem through its network of battery switching stations, but this effort suffers from significant upfront capital costs. 

⁶ Marianne Lavelle, "FAQ: The End of the Light Bulb as We Know It," U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 19, 2007.

⁷ Steve Hargreaves, "The Fluorescent Light Bulb Boogeyman," CNNMoney.com, Sept. 3, 2009.

Tags

Social Enterprise, Sustainability

green-tech disruption thinking published on Stanford Social Innovation Review

Work I co-authored w/ Clay Christensen: Picking Green Tech’s Winners and Losers (February 16, 2011) | Stanford Social Innovation Review http://t.co/QRg4cUR

— ShumanTalukdar (@stswww) February 18, 2011

Clearwell 200+ and growing!

New Ventures in Emerging Markets - publishing on SSRN

Overcoming Challenges of New Ventures in Emerging Markets The Ebay-baazee.com Transaction: What are the Challenges and How Did They Overcome them?

Note:  Original paper written in the Fall of 2005 as part of International Financial Management coursework at the Harvard Business School.

Abstract:  

While the real GDP growth rate of the US is expected to slow from 3.6% in 2005 to 2.9% in both 2006 and 2007, the economic boom is set to continue in emerging markets like India where real GDP is forecast to expand by 7.6% in 2005 and 2006. Needless to say, there exists a strong case to pursue opportunities in these markets. However, as foreign entrepreneurs and investors based outside of these emerging markets look to participate in the rapid expansion, they are faced with the challenging task of pursuing entrepreneurial investments in an unfamiliar environment. The entrepreneur and investor now have the additional complexity of ensuring business models are successfully executed in a completely new context. In this paper we discuss why these two factors are important for an entrepreneurial venture and through the Bazee.com transaction illustrate some strategies to manage these issues.

National Geographic global warming quiz

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/quiz-global-warming.html?source=sem_G2300_ESV&esvcid=S1258693790_ADOGOE_AGI3726434_CRE4217146097_TID332049108_RFDd3d3Lmdvb2dsZS5jb20%3d_RAWZ2xvYmFsJTIwd2FybWluZw%3d%3d&gclid=COfJ9OHnmJ4CFcNx5QodZzdjmw

As we make our way in 2009, I decided to share some of the wisdom I have accumulated so far as it relates to executing in emerging markets. To start, I thought I would include a link to a paper I wrote (many years ago) with a few other business-school colleagues around the topic of establishing new ventures in emerging markets.

In case you are interested, send me an email and I am happy to forward you details on how to get access to additional papers from that year's International Financial Management course. Stay tuned for more discussions on this topic.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1601113

earning venture returns with water technology

Through my experiences working on Stonybrook Purification, below are some perspectives on investing in water (clean) technologies.