Innovation Heroes: Season 3 - Episode. 3
Bringing Power to the People of Ukraine: Energy Innovation Under Challenging Circumstances
For the people of Ukraine, the world after February 24th, 2022 includes adaptation and a different approach to life, and business. One that includes daily step-down, and step-up safety protocols and a ubiquitous vulnerability of core lifelines that are a target of shelling - such as centralized power plants. If there could be a bright side, the war has accelerated innovation in the area of energy management. The decentralization of power generation is on the rise, and DTEK's innovation team is leading the charge.
Open innovation is a collaborative approach to innovation that involves sharing knowledge, ideas, and resources between individuals or organizations.
Working with external partners to solve challenges and drive innovation - AKA the Open Innovation Approach - is gaining popularity (nay necessity) in historically 'closed' corporate environments. By exchanging knowledge and ideas, companies can accelerate innovation and bring new solutions to market faster, while rapidly achieving sustainability and environmental goals - leading to new business models and in many cases, increased profitability.
The corporate world CAN balance internal procedures, processes, and governance that must be followed while still allowing for the possibility to launch new projects and receive outside inputs to solve challenges. It must. Or go the way of the dinosaur...
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Join Adam Olsen and Emanuele Volpe as they delve into the world of open innovation in a corporate environment, and how the war in Ukraine has accelerated innovation via advancing technologies, such as decentralized power generation.
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Highlights from Season 3: Episode 4
Below, we've pulled some highlight excerpts from our interview with Emanuele--tune in to the full episode.
Outside Inputs for Solving Challenges
"There is that famous video, I don't know if you had the possibility to watch the famous gorilla video. It’s so funny. It's a short video, there are two teams of three young guys playing basketball. The first time I was noticing I was watching this video, we were at a conference, it was 2010 and 100 or more engineers, most of them Ph.D. very highly qualified people who of course missed it. Most of us miss the gorilla.
So, why I'm telling you this? Within our corporation, we have people that know very well what to do, but this is not enough. So you need a small function of, let's say, diplomatic rebels that are stimulating, that are bringing outside to the inside and to share what's going on in the outer world." - Emanuele
The Case for Decentralized Power Generation
"Our life before and after February the 24th with the last year of change we have to rethink about priorities of projects. On the other side, we got a good lesson learned and it accelerated what we had in mind before. What I mean is that actually, you see that in the last few months, our power plants, or power infrastructure in Ukraine is under continuous shelling which made us rethink our strategy. Why continue to build localized or centralized power plants instead, let's think about some kind of decentralized generation.
Of course, this is a trend that was already going on thanks to innovation. Think about before - we had only one big power plant generating power ... this has been running for 100 years, basically power, the power industry is 100 years old and most of the time the business model is fixed, it was fixed generation, transmission or distribution, and then the final customer. And most important the energy flow was from one side to the other. You could not have the reverse at that time. Thanks to innovation. Thanks to other technology, thanks to exponential and disruptive technologies we have not only consumers but we have also prosumers. And what is the main difference? consumers use power, prosumers also generate power." - Emanuele
Innovation Accelerated by War
"Renewable generation is disrupting the traditional generation models. It makes no sense to build these big power plants that can be very easily targeted, shelling by rockets on the other side. Let's move further in having a distributed generation." - Emanuele
Broaching Open Innovation
"There are what we call exponential and disruptive technologies that we first learn and then introduce. Let me say the following. Since most of the time we think about innovation, we recall technology.
On the other side, innovation is not technology - technology is the end result. The first approach towards innovation is about change in the mentality of course, and it is related to educating people. As soon as you have people, that is the first layer, the second layer is what we call exponential & disruptive technologies." - Emanuele
The 8 (+2) Disruptive Technologies
"We have defined eight exponentially disrupted technologies. And then we added the other two. Those eight technologies are;
- 3D printing
- Artificial intelligence
- Blockchain
- Energy storage
- Hydrogen
- IoT – Smart home
- Drones – Exoskeletons – Robotics
- XR (AR/MR/VR) – Wearables
Then before the war, we were willing to add also cyber security and the metaverse. But due to some circumstances, we put on on hold." - Emanuele
The 6 Stakeholders of Open Innovation
"We have a chart. We have created an ecosystem where of course at the center, we have our company. We have identified six main innovation stakeholders: these are startups, customers, suppliers, funds, universities and corporations. I have listed startups at the beginning and the corporation at the end since startups always have a higher percentage of innovation embedded within their business, and corporations, unluckily or luckily for me, have a lower level of innovation and the matter is very easy." - Emanuele
DTEK's Open Innovation Platform
"We collect, twice per year, what we call challenges from our businesses. We meet with our business with our colleagues and ask “in which way we could help you?” and we gather all these challenges. We, of course, analyze, filter, we reformulate. And as soon as we gather, we publish.
At the beginning, we got ‘How is it possible? if you publish our challenges, everybody will know, maybe everybody that we understand our strategy. So it's not fair from the other side." We respond with "OK. So, do you want, do we want to continue to keep closed your castle? Or is it better to open?"
We have our platform www.openinnovation.dtek.com where twice per year we publish those challenges and everybody could read and could apply, could apply for a solution. Let's say we started to analyze solutions for proposals with a readiness level of more than five, does it work?
In five years, we have analyzed 2500 proposals. With 58 of those proposals, we have run pilot projects within our company and with 16 of those pilot projects that were fine tuned, they got a contract with our company. - Emanuele
Most important, those proposals are not only from Ukraine since the open platform is open to the entire world and up to now, but we are also in touch with different innovation stakeholders from all different parts of the world. Even more important, when the proposal is fine-tuned we do not buy any startups, we do not buy any company.
We understand that - thanks to open innovation - it's most important for us to introduce their technology, their idea, and their approach within our business.. but we don't want to buy a start-up. Otherwise, you kill them." - Emanuele
The Next 5 Years
"Two points. The first one is don't be afraid about dealing with innovation most of the time. When we hear the word, the word innovation, people are scared and myself as well since we understand that innovation is not technology, technology is a product of innovation.
At the beginning, innovation is a change of your mind. And always when we deal with people, it's psychology, it's scary, you need support, you're like a small kid to see that it works, you need to have people with more experience that are explaining. For example, when we started the open innovation approach, I remember I met with Chelsborough and he gave us a little bit of insight. This is not theory, this is not public relations, this is something that works and not ‘will be working’... it works already now.
And the second point, thanks a lot for all the support that you are doing towards Ukraine, this situation changed our life. In our company, we have more than 5000 employees that went to war. So we also lost hundreds of colleagues. At the end of it all, I would like to say those two words that also changed my life - since for 5 years I lived in Ukraine. And those are, “Slava Ukraini”." - Emanuele
Thank you for checking out Season 3: Episode 4 of the Innovation Heroes series!
Let's keep the conversation going! Interested in chatting with Adam on an Innovation Heroes segment or recommending a guest? To join the queue, send an email to possibilities@herox.com Attn: Adam. Include your name, email, and topic of interest (you can also use the HeroX contact form).
About Emanuele Volpe | Connect
Emanuele Volpe is the Chief Innovation Officer at DTEK. Having graduated from the Polytechnic University of Milan with a degree in aerospace engineering, Emanuele had been leading projects in international machine manufacturing and engineering companies HIRSCH Group and Amec Foster Wheeler. Following 10 years at Enel, he is now responsible for Open Innovation at DTEK, the largest private investor in the energy sector in Ukraine.
Connect with Emanuele: LinkedIn
About DTEK
DTEK is an energy company with a mission to bring power to the people of Ukraine. A dynamically developing company striving for leadership in the European energy markets while adapting to the conditions of modern realities dictated by the rapid development of new technologies in the alternative energy market. Their success is based on people, efficiency, and advanced technology.
🔉 About the Innovation Heroes podcast
The Innovation Heroes series covers all things open innovation, crowdsourcing, and remote work. It’s time to open up the airways, share strategies, engage partners, and leverage the power of crowd intelligence to expedite solutions to the pressing problems facing every level of organization, individuals, and the world. The key word here is OPEN.
We're bringing our partners in innovation, organizations who have run their own crowdsourcing projects, innovator powerhouses, and remote work legends into the spotlight. There is a global network ready to contribute time, energy and intelligence to just about any challenge that comes their way. All we need to do is provide the opportunity. Thank you for being a part of the solution. Discover the Power of the Crowd.
About Adam Olsen | Connect
Adam is your Podcast Host and Possibilities Manager at HeroX, connecting with innovation leaders from around the world to gain insights on how they approach innovation, the technologies they're most excited about, and how these innovations impact their industries.
HeroX is a platform and open marketplace for crowdsourcing innovation that allows anyone, anywhere, to solve everyday business and world challenges using the power of the crowd.
Connect with Adam: LinkedIn,
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