Energy Innovation

The gap between how we imagine innovation occurs and what we expect from it may be widest in the case of energy. Innovators and their dilemmas are fodder for countless blogs, tweets, and media messages. Innovation, in the popular image, is driven by scientific breakthroughs in the lab, start-ups hatched in the garage, and audacious entrepreneurs disrupting old markets and creating new ones almost overnight. The archetypal innovator succeeds by meeting consumer needs today that no one could have imagined yesterday. But in energy what we need from innovation has long been well understood, if not universally accepted. To forestall