New Energy Catalyst report: An innovator’s guide to navigating market integration risks

Great execution is a necessary but insufficient condition for success in the innovation landscape. Companies are often focused on execution – how to deliver on time, to spec, beat the competition, etc. – but innovation increasingly takes place as part of an ecosystem. Companies do not always have a clear understanding of the extent to which their success depends on others and this blind spot can lead to failure.

To help clean energy companies navigate this challenge, Energy Catalyst has produced an engaging new report, An innovator’s guide to navigating market integration risks , which analyses two distinct types of risk that arise from innovation market ecosystems:

• Co-innovation risks: if success depends on the successful roll-out of another external innovation, this increase in collaboration comes with greater dependence.
• Adoption chain risks: if other companies need to adopt the innovation for the end customer to get the complete value of the offering, the odds of success may be reduced.

The research lays out the framework for a tool called the ‘value blueprint’ which helps innovators understand the interaction between the different risks they face. It not only enables companies to more effectively map their own supply chains, but also the location and links of complementors who may lie off their path to market. The report draws on the examples of several companies within the Energy Catalyst programme to illustrate ways of navigating these risks within the energy ecosystem.

This report is available in two versions:

• The full report is comprised of 44 slides and contains a wealth of company case studies and diagrams to illustrate the theories of risk.
• If you prefer to digest the research more quickly, however, the abridged version is five pages long, encapsulating the theories of risk with fewer examples and diagrams.

Helping energy companies navigate the market is just one of the ways through which Energy Catalyst seeks to promote the innovation needed to end energy poverty. The programme has already generated a wealth of knowledge, and this research is the second publication in our series of reports, blogs and think pieces, all aimed at transmitting valuable insights from inside the programme to technology innovators and SMEs in the energy access sector.