 Good evening and welcome. Thanks for coming. I I've had some very complimentary introductions in my time, but I don't think I've ever been Promised as as predicting the future So I want to I want to qualify what what Brian said very quickly But I will talk about how we can think about innovation and particularly how we can think about Innovation and how it will shape our environmental future To give you a bit of background my back my own training is as an engineer in my career I initially started with all due respect to the Microsoft folks in the crowd. I originally started at Apple computer In the late 80s and work there as an engineer in the Silicon Valley first at another product design consulting firm IDO product development and then it at Apple Living in what was really the you know the the capital of innovation at the time and After a while there I Decided to come back and study the process because while it was a lot of fun to do it was equally fun to think about But what that means is that what I on my background really was as a technologist first and then as a as a scholar of technology and innovation And only recently that I move into the energy in the environmental space And I moved there for the same reason that a number of you are here in the crowd today simply because over the last decade It's it's become too important to ignore And and so getting involved in that was simply an under, you know an opportunity to To look at how what I understood or at least what I studied innovation might play a strong role in changing the way We live What's happened in the last two years has been really a sea change in our appreciation for the environment for climate change and for energy security and I think Nowhere has innovation all of a sudden been pulled onto center stage as fast as it has in these areas and That's obviously good for somebody who studies innovation But I think it's it's also a particular challenge because in fact now that innovation has become central to these issues It becomes even more important that we truly understand the process Not only from a perspective of government policy, but also from a perspective of corporate strategy That fact has been made abundantly clear Thomas Friedman Writing in hot flat and crowded said we are not going to regulate our way out of our problems. We can only innovate our way out Steven Chu our new secretary of energy Said our previous investments in science led to the birth of the semiconductor computer The biotechnology industries that have greatly added to our economic prosperity now. We need similar breakthroughs in energy All good, right? Who can who can complain about innovation solving our problems? Well, I think the most important thing we can say here is What do we understand about innovation and when we point to issues like the semiconductor or opportunities innovations like the semiconductor or the computer or biotechnology Or the steam engine or the electric light or the automobile or penicillin It's easy to look back on those and see the impact they had on our lives and the problems they solved But hindsight has a certain advantage to it and it's not as easy to look forward Know what we should be doing now to achieve the same results that those innovations brought us before In fact, I think it's almost dangerous No, I don't think it's almost dangerous. I think it's downright dangerous To take the approach that looking backwards Can give us the right way of looking forward. In fact The white queen in Alton Wonderland said it best. It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards We need to understand innovation well enough to know how it should guide us both our governmental policy and our corporate strategy and moving forward and To that end I want to talk about three things tonight three criteria for thinking about innovation That comes not from the popular understandings of innovation and from from certainly the impact that past innovations have had But rather from the study of innovations past With a look to understanding not how they look from now, but how they looked before they actually happened What would be sort of we call the the pre-history of innovations? So let me talk about the first one of these and in particular, it's called the great man theory of innovation This is perhaps the most insidious because it is the way we tell stories of innovation technological historians have described it as the great man theory in particular because It has a fundamental assumption to it and that's that for every great idea There was a single point in time at which a single person had that idea Before that the idea didn't exist after that the world was never the same and We can go down the list and you'll recognize them and if you're from England you'll have different heroes there if you're from Germany Or you're you'll have different heroes But they will each have a date and they will each have an idea And it was on that date that the world changed Now obviously, you know, we can look at those objectively and say well, that's absurd But from about the time you were ten years old on you were taught these names and these dates and Told to remember them because those were the dates that the world changed And it's simply not the way it works innovation doesn't evolve in that way And I'll give you just a very simple very brief example But an example of probably the most iconic of our innovators and our innovations the electric light So Thomas Edison developed the electric light. He introduced it to the public in 1882 Right now. It's in every Microsoft clip art, you know collection you can find right now probably across the US It's it's what between 9 and 12 in the morning there I can imagine several thousand PowerPoint presentations going off with a with a light bulb in them To communicate just how creative the project is or the team is or the idea is But in fact if you look at the history Edison didn't invent the light bulb His patent for the incandescent bulb was rejected because it was too similar to one filed 30 years earlier In fact he can't even claim credit for the incandescent bulb because we know that there were incandescent bulbs burning in a laboratory in 1860 in Boston when Edison worked there by the time Edison flipped the switch on the Pearl Street station in New York and Brought light and electricity to the masses Brooklyn Bridge was already lit by electricity Central Park was already lit at night by electricity buildings like hotels and Manners and and ships were already lit by electric bulbs and yet somehow we give Edison credit for having invented the electric light So the first point I want to make with all this is in fact He didn't but that's all right Because my first point is it's not about the idea Innovations are rarely about the actual central idea that tends to give them the most credit in the most easily identified label What do I mean by that What I mean is actually even more obviously described here Mouse traps the second icon of innovation People remember Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous quote if you build a better mouse trap the world will be to path to your door This is in fact what we're placing our bets on when we bet on innovation saving us in climate change That if we can just build a better mouse trap the world will be to path to our door But interestingly that's wrong Emerson's wrong for two reasons One he never said that He actually said if you sell better grain Better, you know a better wood or a bigger pig You'll find a hard beaten road by your door meaning if you're a good businessman and you sell what everybody else is selling But you sell a better product people will buy it from you instead good simple advice for a businessman It wasn't until seven years after he died that a journalist turned the words around a little bit And since then have been driving entrepreneurs and policymakers to their doom With the belief that if you simply build a better mouse trap if you build a better light bulb if you build a better anything The marketing the distribution all the adoption will take care of itself now the second reason is wrong is because We have records from the US Patent Office since 1928 and since 1828 Over four thousand four hundred mouse traps have been patented of those Only 24 have ever made money and Of those there are only two dominant designs in the market The first is the snap trap by Victor Which was the original company that introduced the snap trap in 1897? The second is the sticky trap, which is a sort of a 1970s marvel. It's industrial adhesives Slapped on cardboard shrink-wrapped and sold as a cleaner easier solution Anybody who's used that goes immediately back to the snap trap Which is a much more humane way of capturing and killing mice? Nonetheless the point I want to make with this is if you build a better mouse trap Odds are 3398 to 2 that nothing will happen if we spend our money investing in new technology Simply for the sake of developing better mouse traps Odds are against us that anything will happen So that's the first thing we need to think about the criteria We're really looking for when we look to invest in solutions for clean energy for climate change Now the second one is a related idea But it has to do with what we think innovation is and to what extent? We think innovation is in fact about bringing new ideas to the market So let me talk about what I think it what's the second of three core sort of energy innovations the first the light bulb the second The automobile and the third the steam engine that I'll talk about tonight and give you this example to talk about what you think innovation is Why is innovation? What what makes innovation so impactful? If it's not about the idea, what is it about? Well, this is the Ford Motor Company and this is the Ford Motor Company in 1914 Henry Ford, you know as you'll probably guess from my position did not invent the automobile In fact the Ford Motor Company was his fourth car company Literally he drove the first three into the ditch He liked to drive really fast cars. He liked to design really fast cars and the first three times He built the car company. He designed really fast cars and then drove them into a ditch and Back in those days cars were so expensive that you didn't build the second one your company just folded But what he decided to do with his fourth car company was build a car for the masses for everybody This was not a new idea other people were looking at that. It's roughly equivalent to the four hundred dollar personal computer today but that said He decided to build a car for the masses and The Model T of course was not his first attempt Nobody would name a car if anybody knows software revisions You know that you don't name any revision T until you get there But he developed the Model T and he particularly Developed mass production the ability to take a car that had previously sold for two thousand dollars and Within five years sell for three hundred dollars and must enable in the entire market to drive and own their own cars So he developed the mass the method of mass production to produce the Model T at a cost that the market could afford How did he develop mass production? What was so great about mass production that it would in fact go on to change the world? Well if we look at it in fact you can see here in 1906 he was building sixteen hundred cars a year introduced the Model T in mass production and in 1914 seven years later. He was building two hundred and sixty-five thousand cars a year What was different? What made that possible? We'll forgive my technical roots, but I'm going to drop into a little bit of technical explanation here for a second What made mass production have such an impact? Was that it was made up of four core elements? interchangeable parts if you're going to build three hundred or two hundred and sixty-five thousand cars a year You're going to need to build forty or ten thousand cars a day And that means that any one of forty thousand tires built that day are going to have to fit on any one of ten thousand chassis Prior to Henry Ford cars were made by skilled craftsmen, but you simply couldn't afford that So it was the ability to make interchangeable parts and put any piece on any part of the car coming down that day the second Was continuous flow production if you're going to have ten thousand cars built in a day You need to have them moving smoothly through the factory and Everything that had to be done on that car was done in exactly the order in which it was done So much so that in Ford's sort of peak He had barges of iron ore pulling up at one end of the factory and Model T's driving out the other in a perfect mass Balance equation because there was no way you could put ten thousand cars in a corner of the factory to start work on them again The next day the third piece was the assembly line As Ford said for eight hours a day the men become part of the machine If you're going to have continuous flow production and you're going to have interchangeable parts You need people standing on the line and standing very close to one another doing very simple tasks One small task at a time and moving the work past them The last piece and few realize this was the electric motor In fact the electric motor made mass production possible because it allowed you to organize around continuous flow production Rather than using a steam engine to power all of your factory equipment You could put the work in the in the equipment exactly where it needed to go and then run wires to it And thus it allowed all of the other pieces interchangeable parts continuous flow production the assembly line So those were the ideas that made up mass production But if it wasn't about the idea of mass production, what was it? Why was mass production so impactful in Ford's motor car company? Why did it change the landscape of industrial manufacturing and give us in fact the century of the automobile in fact? It was not because it was a new idea But precisely the opposite the reason Ford and the motor car Ford motor car company had the impact that it had Was because those ideas all existed before Interchangeable parts was an idea that was a hundred years old. It was first presented to the US Congress in 1797 as a way to build muskets and rifles by the early 1800s a machine tool industry had grown up to build interchangeable parts by the late 1800s you could buy bicycles sewing machines and agricultural equipment Made with interchangeable parts by the time Ford got to it He was able to hire two of the best machine tool designers and salesmen in the country Who had seen and installed much of this work much of this equipment already in other industries and give them carte blanche to design his factory after that Is is continuous slow production continuous slow production was also not new it was being used in the food industries and particularly in foundries and in breweries and When Ford's engineers built his car company They built it out of catalogs for continuous flow production for the use of hoppers and grains and other thing in and gutters to feed equipment to the worker The third piece is the assembly line and it too wasn't new In fact in 1906 Upton Sinclair published a book called the jungle which cataloged the atrocities of the meatpacking industry in Chicago Less than a hundred miles from where Ford was working Ford and his engineers when they wanted to design an assembly line for the automobile plant Went to Chicago and visited the Swift meatpacking plant Where they saw cows killed in canned and They literally walked out of there saying if they can kill cows that way they can build cars that we can build cars that way And they studied the factories and they took copious notes of how many people work how close apart they work How fast the work move past them how complicated was the work? How much did you pay them? How did you train them? How many managers did you need for a workforce? Where did you find these workers and they brought them back to the Ford motor car company and they installed exactly the same assembly line What was the disassembly line of the meatpacking industry? They bought simply into the into the car company and then lastly the electric motor Again, not a new technology. In fact a few people realize this But Henry Ford's first job was at the Edison electric company And he left when he failed to convince Edison that the electric that the car was more important than than electricity But it was already in use in printing and textiles by the time Ford got to it So all of this is to say in a very long-winded way That Ford and the mass production that Ford brought to the auto industry into the world Had its impact not because it was new but precisely the opposite because it had existed already in so many other places And in so many other ways What Ford did was connect those people those ideas those Technologies under one roof in a way that they all work together beautifully to help one another That's why it had the impact it did had Ford tried to invent any one of those elements He would have failed. In fact the wonderful thing is Ford understood that completely He was asked to testify on who invented the internal combustion engine and he said I invented nothing new I Simply assembled a car into a car the discoveries of other men of other men behind whom were centuries of work Had I worked 50 or 10 or even five years before I would have failed So it is with every new thing progress happens when all the factors that make for it already and then it is inevitable To teach you the comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense Ford was wonderfully astute wonderfully observant of the fact that the only reason he succeeded Was because he didn't try to do anything new he simply put together old ideas in a new way And that leads me to the second criteria we should use when we think about innovation Which is it's more about connecting than inventing? Sure, there's a good idea in there somewhere But it's how we connect that idea with other ideas and with other people and other resources They give it the impact that it ultimately has and if we're going to evaluate new technologies in climate change or in the environment Or an energy we need to be able to look at the ideas and see how they're going to connect in new ways Let me give you a more recent example simply to drive this point home. I Were as I said, I worked at Apple in the early 80s I do I do have the the distinction of never having bought Microsoft stock despite all of so many of my friends having moved up to Redmond At the same time and going to work for Microsoft. They're all done now. They're retired and they're they're polishing their boats but But Apple as a company had the great man culture We were all inventing the world. We were revolutionizing the world one desktop at a time That was our mantra and when I was at Apple as an engineer. I was given a million dollars To develop the power supply of the future the most innovative power supply the lightest smallest and most innovative power supply ever in the personal computer industry Now it's just the fact that I have to explain the power supply is that little box that comes Attached to the cable that you plug into the to the wall And I can promise you I Delivered that power supply was for the Macintosh duo back in the in 1990 But I can also promise you that not a single laptop was sold because of my power supply That didn't matter That's like, you know, somebody going into a delicatessen and buying the sandwich because they really want the pickle that comes with it Nobody bought a laptop because of my power supply In fact, I don't even think it really rated But that doesn't matter because at Apple it didn't matter at all It was about everybody doing everything for the first time completely changing everything we were doing it culminated with Apple building a State of the art factory in Fremont that would never allow them to cost effectively produce anything through the 1990s Because it was so state-of-the-art But in fact when the iPod came out I Realized that Apple had turned around They had made a fundamental shift in the way they viewed innovation Why do I say that because prior to the iPod prior in fact to Steve Jobs returning to Apple in the late 90s? Apple was going to reinvent everything like I reinvented the power supply When the iPod came out It was the 13th MP3 player on the market Now in the old days Apple would have said we can do better and they would have come out with a Machine an MP3 player that was better in terms of sound quality or anything else than the rest But Apple didn't do that. In fact what they did Was they went out and they hired portal player, which was the hardware they designed the the chips and this in the hardware There was already being used in building the other successful MP3 players on the market And then they went out and they licensed with a company called pixel design For the inner in the operating system the user interface and then they added their industrial design But they used the suppliers For all the other MP3 players linear technology Sony sharp Wilson micro electronics And then again they licensed a wide range of other technologies that were critical and using MP3s and They got to the market in eight months Not because they wanted to invent or tried to invent anything or even improve on anything But simply because they went out and tapped what was already out there The next thing they did was I think even more important They saw that while everybody else had an MP3 player on the market to they could do better and the way they could do better Was in fact by recognizing that they could not only connect the components within the iPod But also the components outside the iPod in fact they could do a better job of networking the MP3 player With the iTunes music store and the personal computer Just a quick show of hands. How many people have an iPod in their family? We pretty familiar. Okay Other MP3 players that I'm missing Zoom So But not only did they see that they could connect to the iTunes music store and the and their and their personal computer But they saw that in fact the value the true value of the player was in what those connected to and so Steve Jobs was able to call the CEO of Universal Vivendi one of the record labels and Convince them and then the other labels behind them that if they sold their music online Through the Apple iTunes music store They were going to be safe They could sell them because Apple had a digital rights management system They could sell digital music online through the iTunes music store and users of the iPod could then purchase this music in digital form And immediately go and play it. This was fundamentally what made the iPod network so effective Not only do you enjoy using the iPod itself? But you enjoy the elements that it connects you to first the music then the podcast then the internet Then pictures and then television shows and movies and now with the iPhone hundreds of thousands of applications In fact the wonderful thing about the iPhone as one technology reviewer said is it's one of the few pieces of technology that get more valuable the longer you own it and That's what the network is about. That's what connecting is about the iPod now the iPhone Connects you not only to the system itself But also to all of the different applications and all of the different software and all of the different content that you could enjoy Only through this device the technology connects you to things that you didn't even know you could be connected to When you first bought the machine Innovation is about connecting in this way. It's not about the particular idea, but about the opportunities that such a connection enables So we'll come back to that in a little while the last example I want to bring up is an example that again is really important when evaluating innovation and the opportunity for innovation And the example I use is James Watt and the steam engine So I'm gonna start getting repetitive here Watt didn't invent the steam engine In fact, it was about 75 years old It had been used to pump water out of coal mines in England for about 75 years before James Watt Made a fundamental improvement to the new coming engine, which was the standard engine at the time the improvement he made is circled in a little dark red there, but it's it was Technically speaking called the separate condenser which allowed the steam to condense in a separate cylinder So that the main cylinder that the piston was working in Wouldn't have to heat up and cool down and heat up and cool down with each cycle To go from something that allowed steam to exist to something that would precipitate steam into water Now this was a small change in fact It was such a small change that that the first 20 years or so That was the only thing that Watt and his company could change in the design of the steam engine Because he was really simply replacing old new coming engines with the new improved steam Watt steam engine in coal mines But that's not why we remember James Watt In fact the reason we remember Watt is not because of the more efficient ways in which people pump water out of coal mines today But it was about the the impact that the steam engine had in ways and in applications and in markets that Watt himself never imagined And one of the reasons why that happened and the reason I dwell on that technology of the separate condenser is because Unbeknownst to Watt when he was designing the separate condenser All he was concerned with was reducing the amount of coal needed to heat the water into steam And he did a great job His his steam engine was about 75 percent more efficient than anybody else's and he was pretty happy with that pretty proud of that But unbeknownst to him that change made a few other things possible that had not yet been possible Prior to that as I said the new coming engine you would pump steam into a major a large cylinder And then squirt water and the steam would cool down it would precipitate into water There would be a vacuum created it would it would pull the piston in and do work By having a separate condenser it didn't have to heat up and cool down so you could actually run it faster Because the separate condenser did all the work of the heating and cooling So now you could run your steam engines faster than about 20 rpms. You could run them at 100 rpms or greater But that caused the problem which was because you no longer had water in the cylinder Again apologies for getting technical the piston in the cylinder had to fit very very well The only way he was able to do that was to bring in a supplier who knew how to who learned how to bore cannons cannon holes Much more accurately, but in the process of making the separate condenser work He developed a new way to to build a tighter tolerance in the cylinder and that allowed for greater pressure And that greater pressure in the greater rpms changed the steam engine so that now it became economically viable to run on our railroad And it became economically viable to put inside a factory And with that increased speed you could start turning wheels and turning gears at a much higher rate and therefore use the steam engine in a whole range of other markets and the reason we remember what is because While new come and kept making those engines and kept supplying them to the coal industry Watts engines were being picked up by engineers for use in textiles and in the railroad and In water power all sorts of other industries were starting to pick up the steam engine and run with it and use it in different ways And the important point I want to make with that And the last point is that revolutions set their own course The steam engine had it been for what would have been a profoundly improved efficiency in mining coal and nothing else But in fact it was all of the other applications that made the steam engine what we know today And that's the last important point that I want to make Where do we see that now? The internet's a great example When ARPA the advanced research project agency of the defense Department of Defense in the US first funded the ARPA net Which was the origin of the internet it funded it at four universities across essentially the West as An idea to enable its researchers government researchers to have access to the computing power that was distributed across the country Because computing power was very limited So they created a network that enabled them to do that. They had no idea what they were starting but fairly quickly Through the 70s graduate students started to play on those machines sitting in the universities and on the network And they started to come up with new ways of using it the first of which the first surprising innovation to come out of that was email Cursed it if you will That was one of the first Applications that made the internet successful to people other than the original program funders who sponsored it Now all sudden people could see new ways of using it. Obviously the internet moved on from email But if you look at this chart Much of the explosive growth in the internet and this is simply in the number of people logged on to the internet at any time Took place in the 90s and particularly in the late 90s But it took places in way it took it took place in ways that nobody expected and in fact This is even in creating this chart This is even a little bit of a misleading chart because this is the number of people who are using the internet But imagine if you will if we were in 1970 and we thought that this many million people Would be using the internet To what to access other computers on other university campuses to run large-scale simulations of nuclear winters That was what it was originally intended to do But now we're on watching YouTube Buying things from Amazon doing all sorts of things it but just simply looking at this chart doesn't reveal how much The internet has evolved in use how much it has set its own course and Changed the way we live in ways that nobody was expecting So there are really that I'm proposing tonight three criteria We should be looking at for thinking about innovations and green technology today First they should be not the ideas, but new combinations of old ideas Their value will second come from the network the network that they enable and Third they will evolve and if they can't evolve they won't have the impact that we hope they will have So what does that mean for energy particularly energy efficiency and ICT information and communications technology? well Very quickly. This is this is a chart of energy demand in the US. I use this to present the context in which Information communication technology can have an impact if you look at it This is a chart of energy demand and what you'll see is that transportation takes up about 40 percent But roughly thirds in thirds their split between residential and light commercial energy consumption industrial energy consumption and transportation And then we think okay. Well, how can we solve energy efficiency we can address each of these areas? But if you look at this chart in a different way what you find in fact if you look at the inefficiencies associated is the chart gets a little different That pie now switches over to be about 16 percent is useful energy in residences Another 5 percent is actually wasted energy in residences Air conditioning that has to cool The hottest part of the house down to the temperature that you would like and the coldest part of the house gets even colder things like that industrial Energy used is 17 percent and industrial waste is about 4 percent Transportation is about 6 percent actual useful energy Whereas about 24 percent is in waste The internal combustion engine has a long way to go before it's truly efficient In fact, that should tell you something about the future of the internal combustion engine because anybody with that much room for improvement Is not going to roll over and let hydrogen or some other car company or other car technology to take over but the last this big black gap is in fact The amount of energy lost in bringing power to homes to businesses and elsewhere and most of that's all supply side waste and The reason I bring this up is because information and communications technology is one of the few energy sources New energy opportunities That allows us to address not only the waste in residential and in commercial and industrial and transportation But also the supply side waste If we look at where we have the most opportunity to bring in a new technology We can think about solar and we can think about wind and other things like that as green energy sources That can address our energy demands But that doesn't resolve the underlying waste An information and communication technology is one of those aspects of making the grid smarter essentially by finding those inefficiencies Monitoring them and in many ways avoiding them So the first argument I want to get away with quickly which is that information communication technology has an enormous impact on energy efficiency Which is the single largest energy source we have available to us today If we can take that that waste and In fact harness it by reducing it. We have an opportunity to create energy in effect now Why do I think I CT is in fact good? It's it simply gets on the list as one of those other technologies, but in fact the reason it's good is because 61% of our total energy produced is wasted is lost as we essentially waste heat and ICT has the opportunity then to go after that if we compared on the three criteria new combinations of old ideas ICT wasn't built for energy In fact, it was built. It is essentially computing and telecom. So it has communication standard. It has software applications It's got computers and operating standards and networks and operating systems and measurement devices and advanced circuits All of these things have been already out there and in broad use for the last 30 years So when we talk about bringing a new application into energy and tapping the existing information technology We're not having to invent anything from scratch Most of this has already been done The network now this is where it starts to get tricky But in fact, there's a broad network of players out there that need to be connected For any new energy system to work and in the case of information and communication technology that network is The regulatory agencies that oversee the production and distribution transmission distribution and ultimately consumption of power the utility companies that provide that power the power producers The the the firms that develop and the now the now the community computing firms and telecom firms and the consumers themselves It's a broad-ranging network and it's an enormous challenge at the policy level and at the strategy level to figure out the ways in which those can come together But those are the network that in fact we already have in place and need to pull together in just the right way But lastly, I think the most important one is the evolutionary potential And the reason I say that is because we don't really know the kind of impact that this technology can have Why do I say that because we know the applications that it can meet immediately But we also know by history That information and communications technology is such a diverse set of technologies that there are any number of ways in which it can be taken Just like the internet was taken before it can measure the The temperature of transformers and reroute the electrical grid to lower the temperature of the grid itself and therefore increase the efficiency We know that it can route power to and from homes depending on demand We know can monitor energy use in factories and show you where you know We can identify air conditioning units that have been running for 20 years in an abandoned shed That nobody's bothered to measure before these are the kind of opportunities We already know about but what we don't know about is how people are going to make use of it before But it's a means of production That's in the hands of so many people that we do know that we don't know that we can't predict it Compare that to the other technologies that are out there like solar and wind where we have a strong understanding of where those technologies are going to go And we have essentially a theoretical maximum of their contribution And now it's simply a matter of scaling them up in a case like this We don't know what we don't know and we're looking forward to it now that said what I'd like to do is Then finish with some advice some words from a favorite author of mine William Gibson and Thinking about innovation and thinking about information technology, which is he was he was writing in the 1980s and he talked about The internet as a matter of fact and he was the first to term to coin the term cyberspace and When he talked about the internet he talked about how people would live on online And his visions were amazingly accurate and Somebody asked him once how did he become so accurate? How did he how did he actually capture the future? How did he predict the future? So accurately and he said it was very simple He said the future is already here. It's just unevenly distributed The way he saw the future was to go out and look at how the kids in Finland were texting long before anybody else was and Imagine what it would be like if everybody did that And then he went to the Akihabra mall in Japan and he watched how kids were playing with digital pets And he wondered what it would be like if the world did that and then he went to the computer science building in MIT And he studied the hackers up there and what they were doing with computing in games And he wondered what it would be like if the rest of the world was doing that The way we should be thinking about information technology about any technology and its impact on the environment Is to recognize in fact that we need to have that same sort of perspective See how people are driving these innovations forward in one corner of the world and Imagine what would be like if the rest of the world was doing that so with that I want to thank you for your attention I hope I've shed some light into how we should be thinking about innovation and particularly on green technology And I think we have a time for questions Thank you. Good evening. My name is Noman and I just want to ask you like recommendation in ICT like you were talked about communication and all these things and Again ICT is a regulator. So what they get from the Private operators like there is Voda. There is a Qtel as well and what they did for the improvement in the environment Are you recommend for R&D ferned for any CSR corporate social responsibility? Anything else? Because again as a regulatory body what they should do Okay, how they can contribute into the economy and all right. Thank you So let me make sure I understand the question first. I do want to make a distinction That I think you may already have but I just want to reiterate so when I talk about ICT information communication technology I mean that as a sector right not as ICT guitar. Okay, so But that said what can a regulator do to encourage information and communication technologies adoption There are any number of ways that it can be a courage. I work very closely with the regulators in California and and Essentially, so I can't speak to to Qatar at all, but I can talk about California And one of the primary challenges is to get utilities who make their money In the long run by simply being as efficient as possible at producing or selling power To invest in an alternative future And in many ways what California must do California regulators must do is alter the economic equation By which utilities are paid By which they make money so that investing in smart technology smart meters for example advanced meter reading Is is in their best economic interest But we're doing that but with a range of efforts Including the opportunity for time of use pricing on electricity Which is something that wasn't possible before We're doing it in terms of demand response the ability to reduce peak demand, which I'm sure Is a problem here with with air conditioning in the late afternoon that the utilities You know have to have the capacity to meet the demands of every home and every business still running their air conditioning And the ways in which I see the information and communication technology can reduce Or essentially enable you to turn off or turn down thermostats So but again much of that's you know the role that regulators play is in fact Is in fact helping to shape that that market the economic landscape for utilities and other players And I'm sorry, but it in the US that requires the fundamental recognition that it's not a free market The utilities are working under regulations and that's how they make money Yeah carbon financing cap and make happen to you all of these things are aspects of government creation of the market itself Yeah Thanks for your talk I noticed you spoke a lot about different systems that are currently being used in various different technologies But to me innovation starts with the human being itself And I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say about how people can actually be innovative Because as you said it's about a collection of ideas But how do we get people to start thinking along that stream of thought to open up their horizons and start saying for my father For example, he wouldn't use the internet. He would turn to an encyclopedia So how do we broaden the minds of people to engage with innovation? So there's there's two questions inside your question. The first of which is How do we get people to be more innovative on the first side? It's how do we get people to to lead in innovations to generate more innovations for us? And then the other side is how do we get people to adopt those innovations? You know Your father's There's still time. In fact, it turns out that one of the largest populations adopting the internet in the u.s Is the over 65 population They have more time on their hands and and they're discovering in fact the many ways in which they can reconnect with old friends and Play bingo online, essentially So so so there's hope yet for your dad But that said no, I mean I think one of the challenges obviously getting people to adopt these technologies And the interesting thing about ICT, but but the challenge for all innovations is in fact In fact the primary challenge for all technological innovations is to Reduce the amount of change that they require in order to be adopted One of the brilliant things that Edison did to make the light bulb acceptable Was to to create it in in the form of the gas lamp As a very small light bulb a 13 watt bulb no brighter than a gas lamp That was able to be turned on and off individually per lamp Which was fundamentally different from the the current electric systems But it was the only way that the public could see and adopt the electric light without changing their own behaviors dramatically So one of the challenges for all innovations needs to be how are they going to grab a foothold in the market In a way that doesn't require us to change our behaviors and then after that They will have you know, they still have the room to evolve dramatically But put to your other question Which is how do we get people to be more innovative in terms of leading change of creating the opportunity for change I think one of the ways is thinking about Change as a network building process It's not a process. It's necessarily best left to the engineers Because in fact it's about creating a network The mp3 player was nice, but without jobs's ability to convince the record labels To join him in the ipod network. It wouldn't have been any different than any other mp3 player And I think that's so when we think about innovation and think about individuals leading the way We need to make sure that they understand firmly that they're building networks. Not simply building products Good evening first Technology is nice to improve the quality of life, but There's a side effects a lot of side effects. For example, I am as a head of medical society I look for technology in medical side I found very nice solution But why this solution available because this effect of technology other than weapons or Technology of internet blah, blah, blah So this side effect you don't afraid one day It will change the world backward Change the technology to the back Bushing the technology to the back Because a lot of technology like for example, let's say the internet internet is nice information surfaces blah, blah, blah, but When I be using internet more than six hours For example, I lose my family My family lose me my country will start losing me So this is a side effect. Then we will find another solution Maybe by technology to improve this person From his from his problem because of technology. So technology sometimes not very good Absolutely. I'm not I'm not here to stump for technology as we would say. I'm not here to say that all all innovation is good innovation I would certainly not argue that all technology is good technology I was actually just just having a conversation about this with the secretary jen the You know, there's in technology advances It it's essentially like water it flows that takes the path of least resistance When you know when in medicine Pharmaceutical companies offer the path of least resistance the path of greatest profit You know the solutions we find are the solutions that can be patented and and and sold as drugs as medications Not necessarily the most effective solutions simply the ones that are most effective and profitable, you know and and still profitable So we see this. I mean obviously we're trying to undo the effects of of an industrial policy That has not been to the benefit of most people But has been technologically possible and profitable You know, I I would wholeheartedly agree with you that technology can bring unintended and very bad side effects Or intended in very bad side effects Um, and I and I would in no way suggest that that's a good thing But yeah, I mean your point is very well taken Do we have a um I'm an educator and I'm wondering how you see education playing a role and developing the innovation necessary for our future and for the uh use of it ICT in Energy saving So, uh, yeah Full disclosure. I haven't I haven't to think that there's an enormous opportunity for computing in in schools Very much. Yeah, not not simply to for kids to play on the internet But actually for kids to learn how to engage with others and to understand the collaborative role that work can play Or the you know the the the role of collaboration in work One of the things that's an unfortunate side effect of the technology we have in schools Is it it's geared towards testing and teaching and testing the individual And as soon as the end of the working world that That value goes away because most of the value comes in their ability to work with others If we can use this to create, you know, new educational sort of pedagogies and systems that allow for collaborative work And I think some good work is being done there already We can make a profound difference now Even on the supply side Teachers are often forced to work alone They spend most of their time in the classroom with kids and not very much of their time talking to other teachers About the best lessons or the best ways to communicate subjects I'm watching very closely how teachers are beginning to network with each other and share lesson plans share materials online where You know a history teacher in ohio will talk to a network of a hundred and something other history teachers across the country And they'll pool their their lesson plans And find new ways to teach so we have you know, we have opportunities in both of those areas Bringing the kids up To be to be more comfortable in that technology and also bringing the teachers up themselves Yeah I don't know if my question is a little bit far away from the lecture, but As fun and mental is fundamental And as a defect of what the technology That most of our kids spend their time to play The video games and playstation. So how to take them For to the green area Thank you I have a nine-year-old daughter I live in fear of her playing online, you know, it I mean, I think I think it's a it's a it's a similar question. It's a very challenging question How do we assume I think that and that's That's where family and culture come back And say this is not acceptable. It's not acceptable to play for six hours You know in in our in our case, it's you know Power down and pick up a book or or go outside and play But I think that's where you know, I mean it technology is not the answer to that one So much is sort of lifestyle, but it's far off and you're going to get me Sort of proselytizing. I should be careful with that. We had one question before then and then Oh, no, you please Thanks for a prime slightly. Thanks for a good Presentation Innovation comes out of necessity and sometimes it comes out of the heck of it Now it's also localized most of it Now how to bring that innovation that is done in say the states Or Europe into and work at work it out into a place like the Middle East Or the gulf How can you do that? Well, I think that's I think that falls very squarely. I think what I would argue is just a general acceptance that innovation is in fact I mean it it eventually lands locally But it can be drawn from anywhere And to the extent that I mean I I I spend much of my time Clearly I've hit a nerve. I spend much of my time trying to convince The folks in california as well as the folks across the u.s That the reason europe and and japan's energy consumption per capita is almost half of ours Is because they're doing things that that we could easily do They have the technology in the automobiles with clean diesel They have they're they're doing things that are that are already solved And there could be enormous innovations for the u.s There are innovations that covers the globe, but there are a lot of innovation that only just localize Now my question is how to bring those good innovation that are for You know a place in this world into Another place and make it work. This is my question. Ah boy, that's a that's a that's a long lesson But I I mean I think I mean actually I think I was agreeing with you You know what we see is most innovations tend to take unique shapes as they get adapted locally And you know adapted to work locally But that's also what provides the engine of change because those adaptations make them effective in yet other localities But the challenge is to get out and find them And in fact that there's actually two challenges associated with it The challenge of finding the innovations that are already out there the ideas that are already out there and in use somewhere else And then the ability to bring them in and those are very different Yes to adapt them the first one takes people who are willing to move easily between locations cultures technologies the second Takes local power Takes the ability to make the right connections internally to have something be effective and take hold The kind of people who are out looking all over the place generally don't have much in the way of local cloud or local power The people who have local power are are there and have that power because they've spent a lot of time internally developing it And they don't have the time to go out and see other things. So in fact, what most often happens is that combination It's the combination of people who have been out and seen a lot and the people who in leadership positions or positions of power Recognize the value of bringing those ideas in and use their own political capital to make it happen But yeah, the challenge is that it's very hard to have both happen simultaneously. Certainly both happen by the same people Yeah Okay I was doing fine. I don't think any Where um innovation has nothing to do really with with technologies, certainly no high tech A good example that comes to mind is a microloans microloans was a highly innovative approach to make change in the lives Of thousands of people in the backland nation one Muhammad Yunus and Nobel Prize So I just want to make sure that we don't get caught up into equating innovation with technology necessarily Where innovation is more about the thinking process rather than the tools used To act or to execute on those thoughts Yeah, absolutely. Very good point. And in fact, I mean, yeah to the extent that I would say it's it's not about the idea It's not about the technology It's not about the mousetrap And and in fact any number of those ideas really were successful only because they were new ways of organizing And thinking about the problem Yeah, very good point We'll have time for one last question And Nick, I'm Manu Sherry from Qatar University Right here I recently was reading article that Sony cooperation Created innovative way of energizing laptop or any devices anyway Just the way that wireless can can do it through the air And of course this idea has been here for a long time. I'm sure But it took long time for this to Actually take in place So this is like other factor, of course involved that takes Such a thing. I would like you to elaborate on this voice so long I'm not sure exactly how to elaborate on that, but the question is why did it take so long for this innovation to come out? Yes, some of some of those, yeah You know, I think that's one of the fundamental things that we tend to overlook about innovation And and ford was right, you know, when all the factors that make ford are ready You know, it took us a while to Begin to accumulate so many electronic devices that each require little chargers That we would really care to spend The 100 to 200 dollars on a wireless charging system To simplify our lives, you know when it was one laptop and then it was one laptop and one cell phone And now it's one laptop one cell phone one ipod One game boy There's you know, it's it's the market has evolved to the point where A wireless charger is probably I mean it's not just the technology that's evolved But also the market that evolves to need the technology In a way that it didn't before But I think that's that's something that tends to be forgotten. I mean think about the the motor car It wasn't until people started to have the time to spend to go out on the weekends and drive It wasn't until there were roads that could be driven on Because prior to the 1890s there were no, you know, the roads weren't were too rutted to be driven on There was enough disposable income that the masses could afford a car All these other factors were critical in making the motor company, you know, ford motor company successful So I think one of the things we need to take into account with innovation is that it can't move ahead of the market That it's attempting to serve And so we need to make sure that you know that it comes out in ways where there's actually a market need Perceived or not, but there is an actual market need that it can solve I think I think that's all the time we have but Brian I've been told right Ah, we have one question. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you This is not a question, but I'd like to respond to a statement or a question that Was asked about children in schools. I think Overall, I think what we need to do is we need to stay informed And I think that technology can connect us to to be informed whether locally or globally About how we can make Green innovations. I also think that we need to Take responsibility So and and not just as parents not as schools, but also as children. We need to develop that I know that many years ago we started talking about water And that we need to save water and so children develop the understanding now that you need to save water So it's the same technology and innovation is Integrated into our daily life And now we need to develop that understanding starting with the children But also connecting with the schools and the parents and taking responsibility as a society And a global society at the end so Just in in the interest of having the last word I'll I'll say I wholeheartedly agree with you and in fact some of the best progress we have made in terms of energy efficiency in terms of smoking In terms of seatbelts in terms of bicycle helmets In terms of agricultural practices in the us was teaching the children first And trusting that they would go home and teach their parents Because if you can teach the child before they turn 14 or 30 They're going to spend the next five years lecturing their parents anyway So you might as well give them the right things to lecture about but the 4h club in the us was organized to Teach farmers best practices for for taking care of animals and for farming by teaching the kids How to do it first and then they would go home and bring those practices home So I think you know the opportunity is both ways. There's a responsibility for us, but also also an opportunity If you teach kids these things they become the generation that then is most attentive to it You can bring forth. All right. Thank you very much. Appreciate