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Accelerating Breakthroughs in Energy Storage, Materials Science & the Smart Grid
Posted Dec 31, 2008
“The most beautiful and deepest experience the Explorer (sic) can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science.” (Albert Einstein)
“Nothing that can come between me and the full prospect of my hopes.” (Twelfth Night—Shakespeare)
“I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” (Isaac Newton)
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Rationale
Our purpose is to accelerate and support breakthrough discoveries, inventions, and innovations at the cusp of Energy Storage, Materials Science, and the Smart Grid. Peter Drucker once observed that it takes thirty years for an important discovery or invention to realize its ripened commercialization. Given the mounting problems of global climate change, energy insecurity, grid instability, financial and economic turbulence, the world cannot wait so long. We must design new ways to conceive and deliver practical solutions to the market.
This memo briefly explains why:
1. Advances in energy storage, materials science, and the Smart Grid are not only economically strategic-- meaning they can help to catalyze economic growth—but also essential in delivering sustainable, alternative energy sources on a scale which will free us from our dependence on fossil fuels;
2. A New Collaborative Innovation Model—a Collaborative Ecosystem—can provide a fertile ground for generating important breakthroughs and shortening the time gap, and
3. How such a Collaborative Ecosystem can be designed.
Our Potential Collaborators are diverse and include originators of new technologies and their users and financiers, entrepreneurs, academic researchers, and government officials charged with regulating and promoting these new industries—all who are committed to seeing that practical solutions are achieved in time.
Innovation Roadmap—Scope & Background
Stage # 1( 2005-2008)-- The Project was originally commissioned by the Electricity Power Research Institute (EPRI) in December 2005 with the goal of bringing some enabling tools and platforms to accelerating breakthroughs in distributed storage. A list of the major workshops, conference calls, and the Final Report to EPRI is available at: http://www.energyvoyager.com/html.php/47 On October 20-21, 2008 EPRI, Case Western Reserve University (CWRU), and Energy Voyager sponsored a follow-on Workshop, which focused on fundamental challenges at the intersection of materials science and energy storage, where it was thought, the possibility for collaboration would be greatest, since competitive rivalries were less intense.
The contemplated Innovation Roadmap is unique in that it encompasses the entire value chain, from fundamental design challenges of quantum modeling in materials science, to the practical challenges of utility users. In closing the “gap” our premise has been to bring together in an optimal way “Technology Push” and “Market Pull,” and for this reason in Stage 1 we have elicited from the utility users their most important stated applications and specifications. Our continuing operating premise is that by providing a very broad canvass, encouraging a conversation among a diverse universe of interests and perspectives, and providing essential tools and enabling platforms, we will find new intersections and synergies, and reach a critical mass of creative energy.
At present seven (7) Research Proposals constitute the beginning of the Innovation Roadmap. They include the following subjects:
• Quantum Materials Modeling
• The Development of a Lithium-ion Air Battery
• Advanced Fuel Cells
• Advanced Super and Ultra-capacitors
• Materials Science Breakthroughs and the Ring Power Multiplier: CASE_Material Science Advances for Higher Performance RPM (pdf)
• Electric cars, special purpose vehicles and the Smart Grid
• Nano-carbon technologies http://www.y-carbon.us/
The Final Report, copies of the Workshop Presentations, and a Draft of the Innovation Roadmap with First Drafts of Research Proposals can be found at: http://www.energyvoyager.com/html.php/47
Why Energy Storage is a “Strategic Technology”
Specific technologies and industries in history have served as catalysts and engines of economic growth. During the 1960s in Japan, which is perhaps the best example, semiconductors, computers, telecommunications, and the robotics industries were recognized as “strategic” (senryaku), because they became integral and essential to many other industrial processes. The processes of convergence, linkage, and technological diffusion themselves stimulated innovation, raised productivity, and have been seen as principal causes of economic growth during this period. The premise of the present Initiative is that advances at the interface of energy storage, materials science, and the Smart Grid can play an analogous role to other strategic technologies and industries of the past, such as the railroads in the 18th century, the German chemical dye industry and machine tool making in New England in the 19th century, and Japan’s post WWII Trigger Industries. This “public (economic) good or benefit” to large segments of society provided the basic rationale for special government support for many strategic industries in their infancy. (See Julian Gresser, Partners in Prosperity—Strategic Industries for the United States and Japan, (McGraw Hill 1985). From this perspective, it may make sense for President Obama’s Economic Stimulus Plan, as well as initiatives in California, Ohio, and others states, to target some support for innovation at the interface or convergence points of energy storage, materials science, and the Smart Grid.
The Adaptive Challenge & Collaborative Imperative
When societies are seriously challenged, they face a stark choice: adapt or die, and the critical adaptive ingredient of is most often effective collaboration. Japan’s adaptive response to Commadore Perry’s arrival at Tokyo (Edo) Bat and the consequent incursion from the West is the perhaps the most widely cited successful historical example. The isolation of the SARS virus in a few months by the collaboration of the international laboratories is small but significant example of this more general proposition. When the stakes are perceived to be sufficiently high, people are willing to set aside their lesser differences and work together to find practical solutions.
Are the stakes perceived to be sufficiently high for a broad coalition of Explorers and Innovators—a Corps of Discovery and Innovation-- to work together to help find the critical breakthroughs? The challenges seem clear enough: when we understand how the following forces are combining and working negatively and cumulatively, each compounding the destructive influence of the other: a. the accelerating pace of global climate change and the peaking of oil production will require rapid development of alternative energy sources, which themselves will require more efficient means of storage. The present grid is increasingly unstable, and if the sources of power are to be effectively integrated with the grid, a new Grid System—A Smart Grid, supported by far more powerful storage technologies must be rapidly constructed. The cumulative forces and demands upon our present enabling infrastructure appear near a tipping point.
Resources:
• See generally, Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat & Crowded, 2008 http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Flat-Crowded-Revolution-America/dp/0374166854
• Julian Gresser, Inventing for Humanity—A Collaborative Strategy for Global Survival”—Report on the Smithsonian Conference of 2000 http://energyvoyager.com/docs/EPRI/Inventing%20for%20Humanity.pdf
• Julian Gresser's Course on “The Art of Adaptive Action”. For a brief overview: http://www.energyvoyager.com/html.php/56/76/ and more http://www.energyvoyager.com/intelligence.html
• Peter Gloor's book "Swarm Creativity". http://www.swarmcreativity.net/html/book_swarmcrea.htm and
http://www.ickn.org/COIN.pdf
http://www.ickn.org/COIN.pdf
Although the adaptive challenge is stark, it is not clear that the dangers are well understood even by those in the federal and state governments who have oversight responsibility for the power sector and the Grid. This is largely because the problem and its solution are Systemic and Complex, and involves a constellation of actors over many jurisdictions. How to create a sense of urgency comparable to that at the outbreak of SARS is our challenge.
Proposed Collaborative Innovation Framework
The Elemental Advantage of the proposed Collaborative Innovation Model is that it combines a Sharp and Intense Focus on the Core Innovative Challenges with the Continuing and Compounding Leverage of Resources to address these Challenges. The Second Advantage is we will create Linkages and build Bridges through Alliances, among parties who have not customarily found a common ground of interest.
The following are the essential components:
Rigorous Exploration of the Core Discovery Puzzle (CDP)(and Innovation Challenge)
When asked to what he attributed his Nobel Prize in Physics, Arno Penzias replied, “I went for the “Jugular Question.” We have attempted a first formulation of Jugular Questions for the Expedition. They are:
• How to maximize energy and power density given natural constraints such as periodic table, laws of thermodynamics? How to capitalize on nano-scale applications??
• How to design in reliability of material performance, such as repeated cycling in batteries, aggressive environment in fuel cells, and so forth?
• How to process materials effectively to achieve these goals?
• Are breakthroughs in materials processing as well as breakthroughs in materials synthesis and design also needed?
• How to minimize raw materials and processing costs to enable their widespread deployment?
• What are the most promising areas where an innovative application of nano-materials technologies might deliver the desired turnkey solutions?
Core Discovery “Puzzle” (CDP)
With these broad questions in mind, we frame rigorously the CDP for each of the individual research modules within the Expedition. Several further points should be noted:
• Often important insights can be derived simply by exposing the linguistic fallacy in the formulation of the CDP.
• After the CDP is explored for its linguistic fallacies, it is often helpful to isolate and challenge the controlling and limiting assumptions. For example, for many years ornithologists assumed that “black” could never be a quality of swans until it was discovered that black swans were possible. A similar discovery was made for polio, which for years was misdiagnosed as a form of influenza. See C.K. Ogden & I.A. Richards, The Meaning of Meaning (1923; also, F.G. Crookshank, “The Importance of a Theory of Signs and a Critique of Language in the Study of Medicine.”
• It is useful to cast the CDP as a “puzzle” or a challenge to be explored rather than as a problem. The nuance has important implications for building and gathering the creative energies of the Innovation Teams and the Ecosystem as a whole.
Discovery & Innovation Teams
One of the most important lessons garnered from Stage 1 was that to succeed a Collaborative Innovation Network (COIN) must have a dedicated focus, which the protagonists really care about, and are sufficiently motivated to work together to. We have found that an adequately funded Alliance Integration Team, which is dedicated to facilitating communication and continuously refueling and catalyzing the process, is essential to the overall process.
Each Research Module must also have in place a coherent Discovery Team, which will create a Collaborative Charter and negotiate principles, which will encourage trust, collaboration, and synergy.
A Discovery (Innovation) Engine
We have designed a Discovery (Innovation) Engine which is an integration and systematic deployment of best practices and techniques, which include:
• I-Triz methodology as developed and perfected by Ideation International http://www.ideationtriz.com/
• Lead-user principles and processes as developed by Professor Eric von Hippel http://leaduser.wu-wien.ac.at/
• Discovery Engineering International’s techniques, using EEG biofeedback to facilitate access to “creative reverie” and group-based discovery processes -- http://www.energyvoyager.com/html.php/1/68/ and http://www.zapconnect.com/companies/index.cfm/fuseaction/companies_detail/
eregnum/1933084.html
eregnum/1933084.html
• Win Wenger, Ph.D. and Richard Poe, The Einstein Factor (1996) CD training (http://www.mindperk.com/Wenger.htm); also Mark Stefik and Barbara Stefik, Breakthrough-Stories and Strategies of Radical Innovation (2004) http://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Stories-Strategies-Radical-Innovation/dp/0262693372/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230958097&sr=1-1
The Expedition will include a series of Workshops in which one or several discovery/invention/innovation methodologies will be applied to solving or advancing solutions to the CDP. By placing all techniques, methods, and resources in the public domain, an important additional objective is to cultivate and harvest the full creative potential of all participants in the Ecosystem. As the Expedition proceeds, it becomes fertile educational ground, for all ages, at all levels, in communities around the world.
Other Resources:
• The Discovery/Inventive Process can be further enhanced by recourse to Music and Art. For those interested in exploring this medium, a good place to begin is L.Van Beethoven, Kreutzer Sonata, especially with Itzhak Perlman and Vladimir Ashkenazy London recording.; another is Handel organ concerto, Opus 7, No.2, A-major; Artist: Peter Hurford; Keith Jarrett, Shenandoah See, also, Gustav Dore, “The Creation of Birds and Fishes;” Al Seckel, The Art of Optical Illusions (2000)
• See also, Leonardo, http://www.leonardo.info/leoinfo.html, and its work on the “Second Renaissance”—a Global Network of Scientists who are also artists and musicians.
• The Institute on Management & Engineering (TiME) at Case Western Reserve University has taken an inventory of these best techniques and methodologies. http://www.time.case.edu/newsletter/TiME08-10.pdf
“Democratization” of the CDP
Isaac Newton once remarked, “We build too many walls and not enough bridges.” As the world of science and technology has become increasingly complex and differentiated, researchers are also becoming highly specialized, living most of their careers in vertical silos. Therefore, a goal of the New Innovation Model is to take down some of these barriers and to build new bridges.
One small way to begin to accomplish this is to “translate” the CDP into a series of images, capturing its essence. Images are a universal language. They will allow non-specialists to participate in the Discovery Process and to contribute their “solutions,” again expressed in images, back to the technical teams, who can then “download” or retranslate the core insight into technical language which is meaningful to experts.
This translation and retranslation process opens a new way for professionals and creative amateurs of all ages to communicate and to participate creatively in the Expedition. Creative amateurs have made many important contributions to science, and are especially active today in the multidisciplinary green energy field. (See, generally, Timothy Ferris, Seeing in the Dark, How Amateur Astronomers are Discovering the Wonders of the Universe, 2002) http://www.timothyferris.com/
Strategic Alliances & the Ecosystem as a Network of Networks
Strategic alliances afford a powerful means to spread risks, reduce costs, and gain a powerful leverage to advance our mission by using other parties’ resources and talents. There are already alliances forming in the U.S. the area of energy storage, most recently in the critical area of car batteries. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122957206516817419.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace In Japan almost every major automobile company has formed an alliance with a major electronics company to accelerate innovation in this field. The goal of the Ecosystem is to become a Network of these Networks providing these benefits:
• An Open Source Resource where ideas, methods, contacts, and other resources are freely available.
• Accelerated Market Development—By grounding the Enterprise in what the utility industry demands and is willing immediately to pay for (“Market Pull”), the Ecosystem immediately removes a major area of uncertainty and risk for technology developers ( “Technology Push”)
• Connecting the Dots—At the same time the Ecosystem builds bridges across disciplines and professional activities. This is fertile ground for innovation because most important innovations occur at the interface of established fields.
Resources:
All participants in the Ecosystem are offered a complementary six (6) month membership in Energy Voyager’s Green Alliances Collaborative Intelligence
• Network (CBIN) To register please contact nrivers@energyvoyager.com
• Clean Tech/Green Energy Council/Collaborative Innovation Council -- Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals www.strategic-alliances.org
• News Feeds -- energy utilities North America news maps http://www.energyvoyager.com/html.php/@geoNews/ch4
• Innovation Ecosystem Design Concept http://energyvoyager.com/docs/EPRI/AFD_InnovationEcosystem.html
Innovative Legal Framework
An Innovative Legal Framework is important in nurturing scientific and technical advances. The Ecosystem is being designed to combine an Open Source Platform, which encourages participants to contribute their ideas, discoveries, and inventions to the Commons, with a variety of private regimes for jointly developing and sharing intellectual property. These include conventional patent pooling and cross-licensing regimes with a legal innovation, the Mega-Patent, which encourages collaborators to contribute their ideas to one or several main patents, which avoids the problem of one collaborator citing his or her invention as prior art against the other. Important concerns of credit, compensation and the like are addressed under a private contract among the participants. The Mega-Patent System is further supported by an Alliance Charter, which establishes protocols of communication, and expresses the expectations of the parties and their sense of fairness and equity in a way that is more congenial than a conventional legal instrument. The Charter also provides for facilitation by trained alliance mediators, who are also designated at the outset of collaborative research.
Under the proposed Open Source regime participants are free to draw from the Commons to develop their own proprietary Strategic IP Portfolios. At the same time the more they contribute to the Commons, the more likely they will stimulate another’s insights, which will redound, in a virtuous circle, to the former’s benefit. The combination of Open Source, Mega-Patents, and Meta-Legal Processes, it is believed, will provide an ideal framework for encouraging innovation, while balancing private initiative with the broader public good.
Resources:
• See Eric von Hippel, Democratizing Innovation (2005) for a vigorous documentation of the benefits of the Open Source Model http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm
• The law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips has developed a Green IP Monetization Engine, and its Green IP Teams are designing and implementing Mega-Patent Systems and related Strategic IP Portfolios. (Contact: Julian Gresser jgresser@manatt.com/1-805-563-3226)
Collaborative Intelligence & Innovation Platform
A highly user-friendly Collaborative Intelligence & Innovation Platform is a critical part of the Enabling Infrastructure of the Global Ecosystem. The Green Alliances CBIN offers a beta model; and the Innovation Ecosystem graphics http://energyvoyager.com/docs/EPRI/AFD_InnovationEcosystem.html outline a preliminary design concept. Perhaps the most important insight from Stage # 1 is the Collaborative Platform must serve and respond to the ongoing and articulated requirements of its users. Please send your ideas, suggestions, and proposals to William Moulton wmoulton@energyvoyager.com /1-415-457-6659) - or just post in the discussion forum under the related thread (see link below.)
To facilitate the formulation of research proposals and the planning and launch of the Ecosystem we have provided a Discussion Board with some initial threads. http://www.energyvoyager.com/discussion/forumdisplay.php?f=28 We welcome your contributions.
Financing/RFP (Stage # 2)
An important component of the Ecosystem will be a Sub-Network of venture capital firms, foundations, and government agencies, which are interested in providing financing to projects in the energy storage, materials science, and related fields. In that the Ecosystem can act as a Clearing House for these Projects, we welcome your ideas and proposals which will advance the basic mission. See the last slide in the Innovation Ecosystem for one likely funding ecosystem concept. Please contact Bruce Silverman, COO, Energy Voyager regarding new or ongoing proposals. bsilverman@energyvoyager.com 1-617-543-2709).
The Audacity of Hope
The advent of the Obama Administration brings a renewed and deep appreciation of the importance of science, and a commitment to initiatives which can address the challenges of global climate change, energy security, and sustainable economic growth. Once a critical threshold is reached, the Ecosystem may function as a Neural-plastic Network where Creativity, Vision, & Hope will engender continuous and positive multiplier effects, many of which may not be contemplated today.
Resource:
• Sharon Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (2007) http://www.amazon.com/Train-Your-Mind-Change-Brain/dp/1400063906
Sponsors, Collaborating Organizations, Fellows, and Advisors to the Ecosystem
• Energy Voyager—International Knowledge Trust http://www.energyvoyager.com/knowledge_trust/
• Great Lakes Institute on Energy Innovation, Case Western Reserve University www.case.edu/energy
• Institute on Management & Engineering (TiME), Case Western Reserve University http://www.time.case.edu/newsletter/TiME08-10.pdf
• Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) www.epri.com
• Clean Tech/Green Energy Council/Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals ASAP/www.strategic-alliances.org
• Leonardo http://www.leonardo.info/
• Manatt, Phelps & Phillips/Manatt/Jones http://www.manatt.com/ and http://www.manattjones.com/
Final Note: On the Joy of Discovery/ Excerpt/ Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea—to discover a great thought—an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plow had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a new hinge, to find a way to make the lightnings carry your messages. To be the first—that is the idea. To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else—these are the things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial. Morse, with his first message, brought by his servant, the lightning; Fulton in that long-drawn century of suspense, when he placed his hand upon the throttle-valve, and low, the steamboat moved; Jenner, when his patient with a cow’s virus in his blood, walked through the small pox hospitals unscathed; Howe, when the idea shot through his brain that for a hundred and twenty generations the eye had been bored through the wrong end of the needle; the nameless lord of art who laid down his chisel in some old age that is forgotten now, and gloated upon the finished Loacoön; Daguerre, when he commanded the sun, riding in the zenith, to print the landscape upon his insignificant silvered plate, and he obeyed; Columbus in the Pinta’s shrouds when he swung his hat above a fabled sea and gazed abroad upon an unknown world! These are the men who have really lived—who have actually comprehended what pleasure is—who have crowded long lifetimes of ecstasy into a single moment.”
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© Copyright, January 2009, Julian Gresser, Energy Voyager/Manatt, Phelps & Phillips; All rights reserved. This memo may be freely used and cited, so long as there is accurate attribution to the author and the affiliated/ sponsoring organizations.
