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Illuminators is a show about the people and the forces transforming the business of energy. Businesses and industries regularly face sweeping transitions. Those transitions are now getting more frequent and volatile as technology cycles speed up. We'll tell stories about how businesses or industries have managed disruption throughout history. This show will help energy experts learn from the wider world of business, and help business learn about the unique world of energy.
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Michael Skelly is the former president and co-founder of Clean Line Energy Partners, a company that attempted to build a cross-country power line to send wind electricity to the Southeast. His nearly decade-long saga of Clean Line is filled with setbacks, frustrations and failures. “I do believe in progress. It comes in fits and starts and so maybe…
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The Birth (and Near Death) of Demand Response
34:30
34:30
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34:30
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How Trust in Companies Is Changing Rapidly
34:25
34:25
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34:25
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From Dotcom Bust to Clean Energy Visionary
36:14
36:14
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36:14
By Stephen Lacey, Daniel Woldorff, Brad Langley, Devren Hobbs, Michael Liebreich
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An ‘Intrapreneur’ Driving the Corporate Clean Energy Revolution
35:06
35:06
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35:06
By Stephen Lacey, Brad Langley, Devren Hobbs
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How Failed Green Jobs and Energy Poverty Shaped This Founder
30:17
30:17
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30:17
In this episode, an entrepreneur who’s applying community organizing tactics and data crunching to clean energy in inner cities: Donnel Baird. Donnel is the CEO and Founder of Blocpower, a startup based in Brooklyn, New York. Blocpower helps inner-city buildings lease heat pumps, install new lighting systems, or invest in solar. And it has a piece …
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Origins of the Modern Battery Storage Business
34:19
34:19
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34:19
Welcome to our second season! Over the next eight episodes, we’ll hear from people who’ve scaled new clean energy technologies, built market-changing companies from scratch, and managed big firms in the face of competitive threats. In this episode, a pioneer in storage who helped prove out the business case for putting big batteries on the grid: Jo…
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We're coming back for a new season of ILLUMINATORS! In our first season, we told stories of disruption in other industries and then applied them to energy. This season is a bit different. We’re talking to some of the leading thinkers, entrepreneurs and executives in energy — people who’ve grappled with extreme change — and bringing their stories to…
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Reflections on Utility Disruption With Adrian Tuck
24:09
24:09
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Over the last four episodes, we’ve detailed the history of corporate innovation, wins and fails in customer strategies, the winding path of technology adoption, and the role of big corporates in catalyzing change. We’ve been talking about the recent and distant past, trying to understand how it applies to the competitive challenges that energy comp…
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What Do Google Glass, Segway and Thermostats Show Us About How Tech Evolves?
31:19
31:19
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New technologies and products fail all the time — but sometimes those failures turn into something unexpected. In this episode, we’re exploring the surprising ways that technology evolves. Remember Segway, the personal transporter that became a cultural joke? Turns out, it’s a major force behind the scooter revolution. Remember Google Glass, the au…
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What Can JCPenney, Southwest Airlines and Green Mountain Power Teach Us About the Customer?
35:45
35:45
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35:45
What can JCPenney, Southwest Airlines and Green Mountain Power teach us about knowing (or not knowing) your customer? This episode will look at how companies are evolving in this customer-centric world. How can a fierce dedication to the customer change the fabric of a company? And how can companies fail when they lose sight of their customers? Som…
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What Do Edison’s 'Invention Factory' and Exelon Drones Have in Common?
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33:55
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Thomas Edison wasn’t just an inventor. He created a whole new way to make and sell his inventions — setting the stage for modern corporate innovation. His model influenced a generation of titans: General Electric, Westinghouse, Ford, and the electric utility as we know it today. And then, something shifted. In the 1970s, executives of large compani…
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What Can Walmart and Xcel Energy Teach Us About Moonshots?
34:48
34:48
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What can we learn from Walmart, Xcel Energy and the humble electric motor? In retrospect, big economic or technological shifts are often obvious — but they’re not always obvious as they’re unfolding. This episode will focus on how big businesses respond to external challenges in real time. We’ll start with a glimpse at how the distributed electric …
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Illuminators is a show about the forces changing business. What can energy companies learn from them? Like in many other industries — manufacturing, retail, media, hospitality — leaders of utilities have a very difficult task. They can’t avoid change. They have to embrace it. This show will borrow from some of those industries. We’ll explore topics…
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