The Future of Global Smart Grids - Monitor 360

The Future of Global Smart Grids: A NEW ENERGY INTERNET?

Implications for Corporate, Investment and Innovation Strategies Across Industry Sectors

By Olaf Groth, Jesse Goldhammer and Doug Randall

e are facing a high-stakes moment for smart grids. Trillions of dollars of private and public sector invest-ment are at stake over the next 20 years.1 But, the future of smart grids is unclear. Some believe that smart grids will usher in the next Internet boom — democratizing energy man-agement and use. Others imagine the future of electricity grids falling into the hands of a few, powerful, estab-lished players that are poised to le-verage smart technologies into even greater control over national energy fl ows. Now is the time for business leaders across a wide array of sec-tors to question their assumptions. They should consider how critical uncertainties with respect to the dif-ferentiated evolution of the energy and power infrastructure around the world might impact their businesses and their corporate, innovation and investment strategies.

A High-Stakes Moment

Smart grids might be the next big thing. If you happen to be an energy security or cli-mate change evangelist, an entrepreneurial technologist, a business executive in the

1 “World Energy Outlook 2008,” International Energy Agency.

energy sector or simply an investor looking for large returns, it is hard not to notice that smart grids are attracting a lot of attention. Globally, the investment in electricity grids-related technologies and infrastructure im-provements has been skyrocketing, fed by government stimulus dollars as well as cor-porate and venture capital around the world. The funding is spreading across a wide ar-ray of capital-intensive spaces, including renewable energy sources, transmission infrastructure, and consumption-reducing end-user equipment. The International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasts that invest-ment in national electricity grids related technologies and infrastructure improve-ments will amount to a fantastical $13.6 trillion through 2030.2 Unsurprisingly then, valuations for prominent early stage companies in this space have seen sig-nifi cant increases in recent years; the much-anticipated Sil-ver Springs Networks IPO, for instance, is aiming at a market valuation of $3B.3

But, wherever you hear the sound of money rushing in, you can be sure that the hype is not far behind. To be sure, electricity grids themselves do not have a reputation for being the most dynamic of sectors. Having

2 “World Energy Outlook 2008,” International Energy Agency.

3 Dow Jones Clean Technology Insight, February 2010.

W

TODAY, WESTERN

PERSPECTIVES ABOUT

SMART GRIDS ARE SHAPED

BY OUR EXPERIENCE WITH

THE INTERNET, WHICH HAS

CHANGED THE LANDSCAPE OF

DOZENS OF INDUSTRIES.

Outreach for Insight: Lessons from Business for the Intelligence Community 1

evolved organically, subject to a dense thicket of regulations and controlled by a relatively small number of actors, electricity grids are designed to accomplish one function really well: getting electricity to end-users without interruption. But, if you start to qualify grids with “smart,” a whole new, exciting world of opportunity emerges: “Smart” means fusing a sophisticated layer of information and com-munication technologies with the existing electricity grid infrastructure. Hooked to the Internet, these “smart” devices are expected to generate a massive quantity of new data that can be used to manage the grid, as well as its suppliers and customers. Finally, add in next-generation software applications that can perform a variety of “smart” tasks, such as enhanced demand and supply analytics and prediction with appealing user interfac-es, preferably loaded onto an iPhone, and the smart grid is born. All of a sudden, the boring infrastructure that simply delivered electric-ity to your home and offi ce is now enabled to perform a variety of seemingly magical func-tions: self-healing, consumer participation, attack resistance, energy effi ciency, high quality power and more.

As a result, for established corporate leaders all the way to start-up entrepreneurs, smart grids hold a lot of promise. But, in this kind

of heated investment environment, smart in-vestment requires clear thinking, an objective assessment of the smart grid landscape and a careful plan for the future. Above all, it re-quires unpacking and challenging the mind-set that is currently driving the optimism that smart grids will deliver the expected results.

For starters, today, Western perspectives about smart grids are shaped by our experi-ence with the Internet, which has changed the landscape of dozens of industries, given individuals a previously unimaginable abil-ity to communicate and access information, and, in the process, generated billions of dol-lars in wealth. There is a consistency to this logic. In the same way that techno-optimists believe that Internet companies will cause authoritarian regimes to crumble, and that cloud computing will free us from the tyran-ny of operating systems and enterprise soft-ware, the proponents of smart grids imagine a world in which control over generation and consumption of energy will be completely decentralized and democratized. Why would we not be able to repeat the path from cen-tralized to decentralized system in energy, just as we went from the bricks-and-mortar world to the online world? After all, it holds true to the western ideal that individual self-determination is always preferable to central power. In the language of scenario planning, this is the “offi cial future” — the future that we believe to not just be possible but highly likely to come true.

2

The Offi cial Future: “The Energy Internet“

In the offi cial future, the rapid implementa-tion of smart grid technologies will enable an equally swift decentralization of our ex-isting electricity grids, allowing distributed electricity generation and newfound con-sumer controls with reasonably open access to and management of information and en-ergy. In an effort to spark innovation, gov-ernments will require established, regulated energy companies to share everything from their data to their transmission lines. Tech-nology breakthroughs in energy storage will dramatically ease the integration of re-newable energy sources into the grid infra-structure. Energy will be “packetized” and become routable on demand. Smaller, more disruptive players will get access to capital and fi nd ways to trade and monetize units of energy as well as consumer energy-use data. Electricity consumers in turn will reward companies and investors who make tech-nologies that are simple and effective — and that are designed for consumers who may not understand or care about the details of electricity fl ows and pricing. Consumers will benefi t from feed-in tariffs that allow them to sell their own excess energy capacity into the larger community network, whereby they engage in trading their own energy and related information. Electricity infrastruc-ture developments will focus on the indi-vidual home or business facility, tying, for instance, electrifi ed personal transportation solutions, such as plug-in electric vehicles, to those individual residences and business-

es, rather than to centralized stations.

There are already signposts for this scenar-io: Advances in battery storage, commer-cial successes with facilities-based rooftop solar and the impending mass availability of plug-in electric vehicles give us at least a few reasons to believe that we might have dramatically more control over future en-ergy generation, transmission and distri-bution. Furthermore, in the United States, where electricity grids are already mature and fairly reliable, there is a fl urry of ac-tivity to give consumers more control over energy consumption in order to increase overall effi ciency. Investments on the de-mand side are expected to increase from US$21.4B to US$42.8B by 2014:4 An esti-mated 25M smart meters will be installed in the US by 2012 as part of Advanced Me-tering Infrastructure (AMI), which will gen-erate the energy usage data that can even-tually allow enterprises and consumers to manage demand in a distributed fashion. The American market is also leading glob-ally in another area that relies on a decen-tralized control scheme: Smart Home Ap-pliances, which will grow from US$0.2B to

4 “Smart Grid and Consumers,” SBI Energy, July 2010.


US$12B by 2014.5 Last but not least, mini-grids are springing up, allowing communi-ties and corporations to become their own energy suppliers and therefore reasonably energy independent of the larger regional or national grids.

A Familiar Story

If this offi cial future sounds familiar, that’s because we have been here before with the boom and eventual bust of the dot-coms. Be-tween 1995 and 2000, hundreds of billions of dollars were invested in internet-related fi rms offering a wide array of distributed solutions and services, from shopping to productivity to dating applications, which could be generated, accessed and consumed by almost anyone. Investors and executives took to this new distributed model in droves: In March 2000 the technology-heavy Nas-daq Composite Index rose to 5,132 points, more than double its value the year before. But then, within days, the index contracted to 4,800 points and eventually, by October 2002, to 1,180 points. By some estimates, approximately $5 trillion in market value were lost in the process.6 More than 50% of dot-coms closed their doors and many oth-ers were acquired by old economy competi-tors, — the very same competitors that the dot-coms had sought to displace. Most of these old economy companies stayed true to their business fundamentals, simply using

5 “Smart Grid and Consumers,” SBI Energy, July 2010.

6 “Fears of Dot-Com Crash, Version 2.0,” L.A. Times, July 16th 2006.

If this scenario were to come true, it would raise a number of questions:

1. Energy, infrastructure and technology

companies: If end-users exercise total indi-vidual control over electricity and data fl ows, how will you address the demand for a myriad of personalized electricity generation and con-sumption solutions? Will consumers require storage capabilities and trading platforms to use, buy and sell electricity on demand and at their discretion? How will total end-user empowerment and ad-hoc electricity trading impact the future energy mix?

2. Transportation and logistics providers: What types of individualized electrifi ed trans-portation solutions that tie into home-based energy management will you off er? How will individual electricity generation, storage, footprints, and trading shape requirements for your products’ capabilities? Will personal energy footprint accountability determine how goods will be shipped?

3. Consumer goods and services fi rms: Will consumers and businesses make choices on goods and services based on their electric-ity footprint? Will all electricity consuming goods made today eventually contain elec-tricity management technologies that can tie into an individual end-user’s overall home-based electricity management system? How will you monetize services, if data is owned and managed exclusively by consumers?

4. Insurance companies: What types of risks could emerge in a world in which consumers exercise total control over their electricity? How will those risks be distributed across diff erent geographies and populations? Will overall risk decrease due to higher degrees of distribution, or will it increase due to higher potential for human operator errors? What types of electricity-related individualized insurance products will consumers demand?

4

the new Internet technologies to reinvent their marketing strategies.

With the benefi t of hindsight, we know that over-estimation of medium term demand for internet-based services and under-estimation in demand for existing bricks-and-mortar offerings helped to cause the dot-com bust. Investors and executives assumed that Internet businesses would proliferate and displace physical ones, and that this process would happen quickly and indiscriminately across the globe. They also assumed that the Internet would crush longstanding business models by radically decentralizing consumer access to infor-mation and controls. They based their as-sumptions on what they saw: the rapid development and dissemination of new technologies and the revolutionary, bot-tom-up spirit of the “New Economy.” But, they were wrong. They missed the fact that businesses and consumers were not willing to pay for Internet offerings on a scale and in time to warrant the tremendous, upfront investments in infrastructure in the early years. They couldn’t imagine how security concerns and state controls could recentral-ize parts of the Internet. And, they didn’t want to believe that old, trusted brands and proven legacy business models, supported by Internet technologies, would largely hold their own.

As a result, perhaps the biggest surprise of the dotcom bust, and the one that may be most instructive for the smart grid enthusi-asts, is how the promise of democratization and decentralization gave way to the mas-sive, centralized power of a few big players. It is not hard to remember the prolifera-tion of Internet-service providers, portals and search engines in late 1990s and early 2000s. They are mostly gone, leaving us with fewer large ones, some new and many old, such as AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner, the big consumer goods conglomerates, and of course, Google. These companies, and the control that they exert over the Internet, remind us that conventional wisdom can be painfully wrong. And, they underscore how important it is for executives in the energy and ICT sectors to check their assumptions carefully about whether smarts grids will indeed be like a completely democratized Internet in the short to medium term and across different geographies.

Understanding the critical uncertainties and the forces that are impacting and driv-ing smart grid developments is therefore imperative for making the right strategic choices this time around.


Critical Uncertainties

There are many questions to ask about the future of smart grids: What technologies will disrupt the traditional players in the elec-tricity grid sector? What “killer” applications

will propel the rapid market adoption of these new technologies? How will government deregu-lation and re-regulation impact growth and in-novation? Despite their breadth, these questions can be answered. And, to answer them, it is often helpful to start by nar-rowing all of the uncer-tainties that affect the fu-ture of smart grids to the two most critical: First, how will the major ob-jective of grid manage-ment, reliability, be im-pacted by new effi ciency and market enhancing objectives? Second, will consumers demand in-creased controls over

their energy consumption, and what would they do if and when they get it?

THE RELIABILITY UNCERTAINTY

It’s true that in countries like the United States, there is a confusing and unbelievably complex patchwork of organizations which generate, transmit and distribute electricity, and that the decentralization-focused invest-ments are well-intended in their aim to make

the grid more transparent. But, it is also true that today, and in the near term, energy re-quires central coordination to balance de-mand and supply minute-by-minute in order to keep the grid stable and reliable. The reason for this is simple: energy does not behave like information. Unlike bits and bites, electrons are a physical matter with known properties that must be tightly controlled and managed, so as to travel and arrive safely, on time and in the right amounts without causing blackouts resulting in disastrous economic effects and physical harm. Hence, most electricity grids require central grid coordinators to ensure reliability, security and adequacy of electric-ity. And those coordinators are by-and-large very successful at fulfi lling their objectives: compared to Internet or telecom networks, central grid coordinators in the industrial-ized world on average steadily exceed the “fi ve-nines” network uptime requirements. For instance, the average consumer in the US experiences only about 2 hours of outages per year; in some European countries, that num-ber is even lower, and in Japan it is an aston-ishing 6 minutes. So, in the short to medium term, we should consider the question wheth-er transforming the grid into a more decen-tralized and democratized “energy Internet” rapidly with more elements and factors might not yield more, but rather less reliability.

IT IS OFTEN HELPFUL TO

START BY NARROWING ALL

OF THE UNCERTAINTIES THAT

AFFECT THE FUTURE OF SMART

GRIDS TO THE TWO MOST

CRITICAL: FIRST, HOW WILL

THE MAJOR OBJECTIVE OF GRID

MANAGEMENT, RELIABILITY, BE

IMPACTED BY NEW EFFICIENCY

AND MARKET ENHANCING

OBJECTIVES? SECOND,

WILL CONSUMERS DEMAND

INCREASED CONTROLS OVER

THEIR ENERGY CONSUMPTION,

AND WHAT WOULD THEY DO IF

AND WHEN THEY GET IT?

6

So, it comes at no surprise that the most powerful actors who are responsible for maintaining reliability today, such as bal-ancing authorities, regional coordinators, utilities and regulators are leery to change the system for the sake of effi ciency or mar-ket enhancement that can undermine re-liability near term. Consider California’s disastrous experiment with energy deregu-lation in 2000 and 2001. The theory made sense: make the energy market more com-petitive, increase effi ciency and decrease cost. The reality looked quite different: market manipulation by Enron and others, rolling brown and black outs due to energy shortages, millions of lost revenue for busi-nesses and a utility in bankruptcy proceed-ings. While the failure of California’s dereg-ulation may appear to be the result of a few bad players in an otherwise good system, the overall lesson should not be dismissed. Electricity grids are optimized for reliability.

THE CONSUMER UNCERTAINTY

Today, when utilities need a large industrial customer to shed load in order to balance fl ows in the grid, they have a reliable solu-tion: pick up the phone and ask them to do so, based on pre-agreed terms. In contrast, the smart grid calls for a future of decen-tralized consumer-side demand response in which consumers will effectively control their own energy usage in response to sig-nals, such as the price of electricity. It is not at all clear that the public is ready for electricity controls, let alone ready to pay for them and any “killer smart home apps” with the savings that these applications may help to accrue. Consider the many smart meter

pilots around the U.S., for instance, which have been met with resistance, with some consumers claiming dramatically increased electricity bills without guidance on how to change consumption behavior, and others questioning the utility and feasibility of in-dividualized controls in their already busy lives. And even if we assume that consumers will adopt enhanced controls, no one knows how they will behave when technology enables them to not just use electricity more effi ciently, but store, broker, trade and barter it, poten-tially across munici-pal, state or even na-tional borders.

Together, the reli-ability and the con-sumer uncertainties might actually work against the decentralized offi cial future that most Western investors currently believe. Instead, the future might be one populated by a few, powerful actors who fi nd innova-tive ways to aggregate and make sense of smart grid data on behalf of residential and commercial customers. So, in the medium term, much like the Internet after the bub-ble, all of the new information technologies in grids might just reinforce existing actors, operations and business models, rather than displace them. Let’s take a closer look at this alternative picture:

IN THE MEDIUM TERM,

MUCH LIKE THE INTERNET

AFTER THE BUBBLE, ALL

OF THE NEW INFORMATION

TECHNOLOGIES IN GRIDS

MIGHT JUST REINFORCE

EXISTING ACTORS,

OPERATIONS AND BUSINESS

MODELS, RATHER THAN

DISPLACE THEM.


An Alternative Future: “Air Traffi c Control“

In an alternative future, investors and ex-ecutives gravitate toward established energy players with big budgets and operations re-sponsibility for the transmission and dis-tribution portions of the electricity grids. Access to and management of energy and information is proprietary and centrally con-trolled by utilities and large-scale regional or national network operators. Big established electricity players, infrastructure fi rms and large grid-management technology suppli-ers call the shots in their respective ecosys-tems. Overpowered by reliability-impacting events, such as security breaches and large-scale disruptions, government essentially abandons attempts to empower the demand side and to foster distributed energy gen-eration or consumption control. Consumer energy and information fl ows are steered by these large corporations and government agencies in an effort to stabilize and secure energy fl ows, and to keep electricity afford-able. Communication technologies will al-low these central actors, not consumers, to manage energy consumption remotely in consumer devices. Central authorities will also manage the energy-effi cient routing of

goods and people, as well as the effi cient de-livery and consumption of different types of services at different times of the day, month or year, depending on what is required to ensure the balance of energy supply and de-mand, as well as grid reliability.

We are already seeing signposts for this scenario in global markets. To enable reli-able and secure transmission, US$30B will be invested in the central elements of grids: intelligent transmission and distribution in-frastructure, grid operators and utility op-erations globally from 2010-2014.7 The best example of a market with a relative focus on the centralized model is China, which invest-ed an estimated US$36.5B in updated trans-mission infrastructure in 2009. Its brand new high-voltage, low-loss, DC transmission lines run from central generation locations in the rural northwestern provinces to the industrial production hubs in its southeast-ern coastal provinces. Moreover, across the country, China has already installed nearly 1,000 PMUs – more than any other country in the world – to help central grid operators manage transmission infrastructure. In Chi-na, as in many markets around the globe that have established grids, the regulatory envi-ronment and dynamics between established energy players are optimized for reliability, balancing supply and demand, not for effi -

7 SBI at www.sbireports.com; includes T&D Monitoring and Control Systems; Distribution Automation; Protective Relays; Substation Automation; and PMUs; Automated Metering Infrastructure excluded.

8

ciency, consumer controls or profi t. Simi-larly, there are only a few powerful national and regional transmission-operating orga-nizations, which execute on this reliability mandate and hold almost all of the power to shape policies and execute the massive in-frastructural and technological changes.

Needless to say, both scenarios are extremes that are intended to question our assump-tions and demonstrate the plausibility of vastly differing investment and innovation conditions. The future will likely play out in various hybrid forms between the two extremes across different countries. But depending on where exactly a market will fall along the centralized versus decentral-ized spectrum, making bad decisions based on the wrong assumptions at any given time could make or break a company.

What To Do About It

In the midst of what is claimed to be a revo-lution in the electricity sector (which should rather be characterized as an evolution in some markets), it’s easy to get lost in the technical details and to build business plans that refl ect untested, potentially risky as-sumptions about the future

Before your company or investment fi rm bets the farm on any one future for a giv-en market, take a step back to evaluate the uncertainties and forces that are driv-ing the implementation of smart grids and to examine how these forces will generate unique combinations of risk and opportuni-ty. Specifi cally, business executives should ask how these uncertainties and forces may

play out across different geographies in fu-ture, affecting consumption and competi-tion patterns, and hence strategic choices in their sectors.

If this scenario comes true, it will raise several questions:

1. Energy, infrastructure and technology

companies: What will be the energy mix that caters best to the needs of utilities and trans-mission operators? Will industrial-strength wind and solar farms, alongside nuclear and coal, be preferred by these players over resi-dential or mini-grid solar? What types of infra-structure projects and technology systems are needed to address large central deployments?

2. Consumer goods fi rms: What kind of com-mand and control technologies need to be embedded in consumer goods that rely on central authorities to manage electricity and the behavior of devices remotely? How will privacy concerns be addressed if central play-ers own most of the end-use data?

3. Transportation and logistics providers:

What types of remote control capabilities will logistics fi rms need to embed in their elec-trifi ed transportation solutions to allow for radically centralized electricity management? How will transport and shipping routes and timing be impacted?

4. Insurance companies: Will a centralized energy grid system have greater complexity, be prone to cascading disruption, potentially resulting in entire system failures? What types of risk will the centralized electricity paradigm yield and what types of insurance products does this require? Which programs can insur-ance companies put in place to mitigate these large-scale risks with central authorities?


Of course, nobody can predict exactly what the smart grid of the future will look like and, there-fore, which companies will win. But, strategic planning is not about prediction; it’s about chal-lenging our assumptions about the future in or-der to imagine what’s possible. And, it’s about making choices today that are designed to con-vert those possibilities into profi t. We have suc-cessfully used this process, which we call “From Scenarios to Strategy,” across many sectors.

How Monitor Can Help

For companies hoping to capitalize on smart grid opportunities, Monitor can help in the fol-lowing ways:

1. Build Scenarios: Apply proven foresight- and insight-generating methodologies, along with networks of renowned thought-leaders and experts, who can help your organization make sense of the complexity. We identify the most relevant uncertainties in the smart grid space and build 3-5 alternative scenarios that demonstrate how a given market might plau-sibly evolve. This will help your senior execu-tives question their assumptions about how the future of smart grids, align their visions of the evolving landscape, recognize signposts particular futures and set strategy fl exibly.

2. Identify Options: Identify, quantify and prioritize the implications of and options in the unfolding scenario pictures described above that matter most to your business. This

will help separate mission-critical options from those that are of secondary importance. It will also yield a portfolio of priority op-portunities for different scenarios, each with quantifi ed bottom-line impact. For instance, depending on an organization’s business fo-cus, its product mix may be impacted severely by regulatory and standards changes driv-ing toward the centralized market scenario, rather than by consumer empowerment pat-terns in the decentralized scenario. Resulting opportunities might consist of partnerships and acquisitions that address utilities, net-work operators or large technology providers, while steadily building capabilities toward the longer-term decentralized scenario with con-sumer solutions.

3. Formulate Strategy: Defi ne long-range goals and formulate a plan that provides the best options for success. This strategy will in-clude an execution plan with action steps and fi nancial performance metrics along the way. And, it will be “future-proof,” i.e. it would perform robustly against the extreme book-end scenarios and various hybrid scenarios in between. It will also allow an organization to recognize and navigate shifts in market scenarios fl exibly to stay ahead of surprises. For instance, robust strategies might entail building capabilities and solutions that play well in the biggest centralized markets, but also generate derivative know-how that can be leveraged for success in a more decentral-ized grid structure.

We can help your organization to convert the uncertainty of this high-stakes moment into a winning opportunity. ●

10

About the AuthorsOlaf Groth is a senior practitioner at Monitor 360, where he leads engagements that employ strategy,

innovation and uncertainty management craft to generate insights for clients in business and government in

hi-tech, cleantech and energy domains. Olaf also brings to his clients 20 years of international experience in

business and academia. Previously, he headed hi-tech and clean-tech work for Monitor’s GBN unit. Prior to

joining Monitor, he was a business executive for international corporate, market and operations development,

public policy and strategy with Qualcomm, Boeing, Vodafone, AirTouch Communications, a clean-tech

startup, and innovation-focused boutique advisory fi rms. In these functions, he spent many years working

in Asia, Europe, North America, the Caribbean, and parts of the Middle East. Olaf is a frequent panelist and

speaker on international innovation, technology and energy trends and their intersections with the global

economy and geo-politics. He is involved in a number of initiatives, thinktanks and forums, such as the panel

of judges for GE’s $200M Ecomagination Challenge, Clean Economy Network, the Energy, Environment and

Security Committee of the Pacifi c Council on International Policy, the International Institute for Strategic

Studies, the BMW Foundation Transatlantic Forum, and the Bay Area Council Economics Institute. Olaf

holds MALD and PhD degrees in international aff airs with technology, business, and political economy focus

from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, and BA and MAIPS degrees with similar emphasis from the

Monterey Institute of International Studies.

[email protected]

Jesse Goldhammer is a partner at the Monitor Group and Monitor 360, where he works with public- and

private-sector clients to undertake strategic, analytic, organizational and institutional transformation. Jesse

has spent the past 20 years bringing together unique people, ideas and approaches in order to devise lasting

and eff ective solutions to vexing problems. Th ese solutions include developing novel analytic approaches to

understand and reframe client challenges; using human networks to leverage alternative and unorthodox

perspectives; and designing training programs to propagate new strategies and tradecraft. Having originally

come to Monitor through Global Business Network, Jesse is also an expert in scenario planning, has taught

scenario planning training courses and published “Four Futures for China Inc.” in Business 2.0. Jesse previously

worked in search-related strategy, sales and analysis at Yahoo!, Overture and Inktomi. He holds a BA in social

science from UC Berkeley, an MA in political science from New York University, and a PhD in political

science from UC Berkeley. An accomplished instructor and expert in modern political theory, Jesse has

written several articles and is the author of Th e Headless Republic (Cornell University Press, 2005). He is

currently working on a book concerned with the topic of deviant globalization.

[email protected]

Doug Randall is Managing Partner of Monitor 360 and a Partner at Monitor. He has nearly 20 years of

professional experience serving governments and private sector organizations in strategic planning, scenario

thinking, networking, and complexity management. Doug is a recognized thought leader on managing

uncertainty, designing eff ective institutionalization programs, and a select set of geopolitical issues. He has

lectured at the Wharton School, Stanford, and National Defense University; and has published in the Financial

Times, Wired magazine, and Strategy & Learning. Doug was previously co-head of the consulting practice at

Global Business Network (GBN). Before that, he was a Vice President at Snapfi sh, a senior consultant at

Decision Strategies, Inc., and a senior research fellow at the Wharton School. Doug received his BA, cum

laude, from the University of Pennsylvania and his MBA from the Wharton School. He practices Ashtanga

yoga and meditates daily. He is on the board of directors of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.

[email protected]


ABOUT MONITOR 360

Monitor 360 helps organizations make sense of complex geo-strategic issues.

We serve a variety of clients, including governments, NGOs and corporations.

Our unique multi-disciplinary approach leverages best practices from corporations and

academics to develop new analytic approaches, capabilities and tradecraft. In creating

these solutions, we reach out to a proprietary network of thousands of thought leaders

and experts from around the world who off er fresh perspectives. We institutionalize

these solutions through a variety of novel approaches, including state-of-the-art custom

training programs, workshops, and other innovative capability development programs.

Working with Monitor 360, our clients get actionable answers to their problems.

For more information about Monitor 360,

please contact Olaf Groth at [email protected] or +1 (415) 205-0807

101 Market StreetSuite 1000San Francisco, CA 94105T 415-932-5300

www.monitor-360.com

The Future of Global Smart Grids - Monitor 360

Documents

Transcript of The Future of Global Smart Grids - Monitor 360