Innovation in IT overtook big names of the sector in the end of the 1990's. Once the dot-com bubble was over in the beginning of the 2000's, ony a few of the startups remained as independant profitable businesses, a lot disappeard, and the rest was swallowed by IT giants (IBM, HP, CISCO...) to become part of their portfolio.
Let's apply this to ET.
Innovation in ET overtook big names of the sector in the end of the 2000's. Once the greentech bubble was over in the beginning of the 2010's, ony a few of the startups remained as profitable independant businesses, a lot disappeard, and the rest was swallowed by ET giants (GE, ABB, AREVA...) to become part of their portfolio.
Does this sound familiar/likely?
In my opinion it is only natural that innovation sometimes overtakes regular businesses. In the end, if the new business model is close enough to the historical one, big names will tend to integrate the smaller innovative players, if not, they will leave them grow on their own.
See broadband internet access: in the end of the 1990's, major PC or software vendors tried to become ISPs. They eventually sold the business to cable operators, as those vendors realized that they could not properly address this market.
I believe it might be the same with "ET".
Tom Grand - 11/04/2008 - 05:42
Further comparison - good point - and then some
Tom, thanks for the insights.
Let's not stop with the vendors in the ET space. Is there a corollary that suggests that larger utilities who embrace Energy Technology (ET) will swallow utilities who do not (large or small)? Will these tech-savvy utilities have an advantage with the customer base that makes them more appealing to the customer with more options, reliability, etc.?
Or will we see the small utility innovators (e.g. several municipal utilites across the US) act like Google, developing their own market and bypassing the traditional market in rocket-like fashion?
I guess my point is the same as yours. There will be consolidation in utilities and it may be driven by the ET-savvy factor. It may be driven by those innovators (big or small) who serve customers in a fresh way, which also seems to suggest ET-richness.
From your Vendor ET comparison (I agree), we also sometimes see the big guy swallow the small innovator only to kill the innovation by act or accident. I have said in the past that big companies don't innovate, they buy small companies who innovate. This could also take place in the utility space. I just hope the Law of Unintended Consequences doesn't hit our industry hard.
We're getting mixed signals about the vitality of the smart grid market. On the one hand, the recent DistribuTECH conference was one of the most successful ever. On the other, a well-known Wall Street analyst recently told his clients that the smart metering sector is "facing several headwinds," including weak regulatory support in the U.S. and delays in European adoption. Taking the pulse of the smart grid industry is this week's Tuesday Topic.
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