Posts Tagged by IBM
IBM’s Vice President of Energy and Utilities — Making a Difference in Electric Transportation
| April 18, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Here’s another quick note from San Diego, where I’m spending the day at the Plug-In Electric Vehicle Infrastructure USA 2012.
I just had a great conversation with Allan Schurr, IBM’s Vice President of Energy and Utilities. I performed quite a few projects for IBM over the 30 years that I functioned as a marketing consultant for the tech sector, and thus they’ll always occupy a warm spot in my heart — even if they did achieve their dominance in the late 20th century with the borderline abusive business tactics for which they were well known at the time.
Nowadays, we have a kinder, gentler — and I would say smarter IBM, a company dedicated to adding true value with its level of innovation, business strategy, and industry expertise. I’m delighted to see that IBM embraces electric transportation, and focuses on integrating its many information-related pieces, e.g., smart-grid. IBM’s done a great deal of work in early-adopter Denmark, where, for instance, an EV comes home at the end of a workday, gets plugged in, and waits patiently for the wind speed to cross a certain threshold, at which its charger switches on, thus minimizing the use of fossil fuels and maximizing the penetration of wind into the Danish grid-mix.
Great stuff, guys. Keep up the good work.
2GreenEnergy's Craig Shields … At Your Service
| December 12, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
Do you ever worry that launching your products — aimed as they are on disruptive innovation – will fail to resonate in the marketplace of ideas?
…that your “elevator pitch” – perhaps even your entire business model – will fail to differentiate you effectively from everyone else?
… that your attempts to clarify your true uniqueness to the market will fall flat?
And here’s another question: Do you ever wish there were an easy and inexpensive way to get some strategic, multi-disciplinary business advice from someone with a background of success in this space? Read More
IBM — Smart Energy Management and Sustainability Solutions
| October 7, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
A recent guest post called attention to IBM’s announcements and recent initiatives in Smart Energy-Management and Sustainability Solutions for the enterprise.
I thank our guest for the post. I did a great deal of work for IBM over my three-decade career as a marketing consultant. In fact, about a million years ago, I wrote extensively about PC-mainframe connectivity, and brought thousands of attendees to IBM seminars. Seems like another lifetime.
Seriously, I have the highest respect for IBM’s commitment to smart grid. Keep up the good work.
Renewable Energy and Venture Capital
| January 7, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Business |
A great number of readers have written in recently asking about raising investment capital. Most are fairly non-specific about this, hoping, I suppose, to find an extremely wealthy angel investor who likes their idea – in terms of both its risk/reward profile and its philanthropic merits – and is willing to roll the dice. This can happen – in fact, is does happen every day.
Yet I want to write a short post on venture capital. By contrast to angel investors, VCs tend to:
1) Use other people’s money rather than their own; they represent large pools of capital that come from pension funds, government entities, endowments, etc., and
2) Be extremely selective about the deals they take on, looking to “swing for the fences,” as I like to say, i.e., embracing deals whose upside potential is enormous, where an occasional success more than compensates them for their many (smaller) failures.
Looking back on my 25-year career as a marketing consultant to high-tech companies, I remember the good old days fondly. Most of our clients were Fortune-sized: Sony, Pioneer, Oracle, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, IBM, 3M, Philips, 3Com, ITT, Fedex, Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, as so forth — but many were venture-capitalized start-ups. As one of several examples, I worked for years for a nascent company called etNetworks – a joint venture with IBM that was focused on using satellite technology to deliver IBM courseware to computer resellers worldwide. Representatives of the venture team were in most of our meetings, and I got to know the type of expectations they have and the way they like to interact with the management teams (and consultants) within their portfolio companies.
The upside potential of etNetworks, as I demonstrated in my numerous research presentations, was most definitely there. The numbers penciled out beautifully in terms of the size of the reseller market-base, their disdain for travelling to receive training, and their willingness to pay for training and educational services. Initially, a venture capital giant took a huge position in the company.
And, to a lesser extent, so did I; in exchange for a substantial reduction in billings, I received over $1 million in etNetworks’ stock. I remember my seven-year-old son was so excited when, in an effort to get him to grasp the concept of equity ownership, I explained this all to him. “How many Lamborghinis can we buy if etNetworks goes public at $5 a share?” he’d ask, his eyes as wide as tennis balls. “A whole parking lot full of ‘em,” I replied, hugging him close.
Its current value? Zero. It wasn’t the homerun it looked like a few years earlier — more like a ground-out to the shortstop – a disappointment for everyone – including my son and me. Essentially, the advent of a reliable, ubiquitous, high-bandwidth Internet did the same thing to etNetworks that it’s in the process of doing to the video rental industry.
Of course, new venture deals happen every day — and many create huge rewards for all concerned. In the process of discussing renewable energy business consulting with 2GreenEnergy readers, I’ve provided my experiences with this process, and offered whatever advice I’m able to.
To add to that, I just came across this truly excellent article on the realities of pitching VCs on an idea; the author explains this process far better than I can from my perspective. Enjoy, and good luck.
Corporate Culture and Electric Vehicles
| August 7, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
Bruce Hamilton writes:
(I’m) VP of Business Development (with) an MSEE and 40+ years of engineering and marketing management experience in all types of electronics companies. I have found good opportunities for my company to enter the solar PV inverter market and the Smart Grid (all four layers) using basically our current product lines and one new disruptive technology we are bringing to the market…..My problem with the EV market is sorting out all the opportunities to find the best match between our corporate culture (we are a public company so have little patience with slow to mature revenue and profit), our corporate product strengths, and niches in the EV market.
Thanks for writing, Bruce. This, of course, is yet another force working against us all. As a marketing consulting in high-tech, I spent almost 30 years making friends with clients at places like H-P, IBM, National Semiconductor, DEC, GE, Litton, Sony, 3M, etc. Even though I wasn’t even an employee of the companies, I could share in the frustration many of these fine people suffered in their failed attempts at innovation in a stuffy, ultra-conservation corporate environment. I wish I had an answer for you.
