Why do you do what you do?

I do what I do because I care deeply about the environment and the world we’ll leave to our children and their children. Smart Grid is having a global, positive impact on our environment and as it becomes Smart Infrastructure, it will have even an even greater positive impact

What’s the most rewarding aspect of your job?

Educating people on the positive environmental impact of Smart Grid and the Energy Network, and helping people understand that we all have the ability to make smarter energy decisions that improve the environment, our finances and our lives.

In your experience, what’s the one thing that most often gets in the way of great marketing?

Trying to make the story too complicated. When you crystallize a complex or complicated message into a simple, clear and personally meaningful message, you can do some great marketing.

What’s the most important lesson that you’ve learned as a marketer/advocate?

I learned that it’s most important to really understand your customers’ position and pain points, and then explain your solution in ways that address those positions and pain points in meaningful ways that truly resonate with your customer. It has to be relevant to their lives.

If you could wave your wand and make any product or service in the world a smashing overnight success, what would it be?

Our CustomerIQ Customer Engagement platform because it empowers all consumers by giving them the ability to manage and track their energy consumption, connect them with their energy, and make smarter energy decisions.

Suppose you’re a software startup. You have to court at least three audiences simultaneously:

• Investors—because you need funding;
• Prospects—because you need paying customers; and
• Prospective employees—because it takes talent to operate a company that people want to invest in and to create products that people want to buy.

Each of these audiences has one job to do.

• Investors must ensure a decent return on capital. They’re looking for a great ROI.
• Customers must find a solution to a problem. They’re looking for a great user experience.
• Prospective employees must maximize the value of their skills. They’re looking for a great opportunity.

But you have three jobs to do: sell the ROI to the investor, sell the user experience to the customer, and sell the opportunity to the prospective employee. What’s needed, of course, are separate messages for each audience. But that takes research, analytical rigor and copywriting chops (i.e., time and money). So many companies lock themselves in a room, draft a brief multipurpose elevator pitch and call it a day. And that works out fine—until some phrase they threw in to appeal to an investor utterly confuses a customer.

Sound familiar? If you can invest the time and money to do messaging right, right away, you’ll benefit tremendously. But if you aren’t in a position to do so just yet, it makes sense to choose one audience to target first. Simultaneously sending multiple messages to multiple audiences only fills the communication lines with static. So take them one at a time, and start with the customer.

Investors want to know what is, and how it works. Customers want to know what it does, and why it matters.

If you spend your time telling prospective customers what it is and how it works, chances are slim that you’ll keep their interest. Instead, tell them what’s in it for them. That’s when they buy, and that’s when you book revenue, and that’s when an investor starts to pay attention.

Will you lose an investor’s interest by talking about what your product does, and why it matters? Not likely. In fact, those answers are critical to the success of your business. In a nutshell, having customers may help you attract investors, but having investors won’t help you attract customers. So start with a compelling value proposition for the end user. Start with the why. You can explain the how after you get that pitch meeting.

For years, our efforts as cleantech and sustainability champions have focused on the latter half of this statement—preventing that to which we cannot adapt. But now—in the wake of Hurricane Sandy and countless other natural disasters of shocking magnitude, in the face of increasingly alarming trends in global temperature data, and having witnessed the melting narrative revealed by “Chasing Ice”—we realize we must turn our attention to the first half of the statement: We’ve got to adapt to that we can’t prevent. While we have it in our power to limit global warming, it’s too late to prevent it. So we’d better figure out how to live with it. Literally. Adaptation is the new imperative.

As Ron Pernick puts it in “Clean Tech and the Big Turnaround,” this is the year extreme weather will make “adaptation” and “resilience” household words.

Adaptation and resilience, once the domain of public policy and infrastructure wonks, will become increasingly mainstream and drive a whole new industry (with standards, best practices, and business contracts) centered on preparedness for major natural disasters and climate disruptions. Think microgrids – distributed power systems that can work both hand-in-hand with the larger grid and in isolation – and highly efficient water and food supplies centered close to urban areas.

It’s as if, failing to reduce, reuse and recycle in order to prevent a climate change calamity, Earth has presented us with a climate change calamity that will now force us to reduce, reuse and recycle. Of course, nature always wins. The sooner we realize you can’t beat the laws of nature, and learn to apply them brilliantly rather than fight them hopelessly, the better off we’ll be—materially, financially, physically and socially.

Anybody need help explaining and promoting an innovation designed to foster adaptation and resilience through a more efficient use of resources? Operators are standing by.

In the wake of the November elections, the left-liberal/progressive end of the media spectrum is clearly emboldened—talking loudly and often not just about the “fiscal cliff” and the Middle East, but about domestic energy policy, “green jobs,” electric vehicles, and cleantech in general as an engine for innovation and economic growth. Yes, they are using the word “cleantech.”

And it’s not just casual mentions as part of a soapbox commentary by the usual suspects at MSNBC. Fresh on the heels of Automobile Magazine naming the Tesla Model S Car of the Year (not Electric Car of the Year), former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm devoted an entire week of her Current TV show “The War Room” to a celebration of her love affair with her Chevy Volt. In a series of segments one might call “EVs for Dummies,” she featured a demo of the charging technology, interviewed battery scientists and energy policy wonks, and stoked the debate about cleantech’s role in the rehabilitation of the U.S. manufacturing base.

That same week, the DOE announced 66 new ARPA-E grants—$130 million for everything from undersea turbines to solar (eight of the grants were for solar research)—and Solyndra began to feel like a distant memory. SolarCity’s long-awaited IPO next week is another signal of confidence in the sector.

We think Katie Fehrenbacher hit the nail on the head, as she often does, with the title of her recent GigaOm piece: “Cleantech is dead, like the Internet was in 2000.” She was paraphrasing a comment made by Greenstart co-founder Mitch Lowe during a panel discussion at Verge about the state of cleantech venture investment. “You’re trying to solve resource constraints and you’re trying to solve energy constraints,” he said. “And when you take the label off, there’s lots of ways to do that.” Next to him was Rodrigo Prudencio, a partner at Nth Power, who predicted that “‘Cleantech’ will resolve away, but we’ll continue to invest in solving cleantech problems.”

Fehrenbacher noted that The Cleantech Group, credited with coining the term, argues that cleantech must, and therefore will, become part of everything—so ubiquitous it need not be mentioned. “Cleantech” will become a redundant term, and fall out of fashion, not because it’s waning as focus of innovation and investment but because it’s growing so fast.

Mohr Davidow partner Josh Green, looking back on 32 years in Silicon Valley, believes the IT revolution was just the opening bout in a wave of transformative innovation across every industrial sector. Since the sheer size of the energy sector dwarfs that of IT, he says, the changes yet to come in energy—and at the intersection of energy and IT (whether you call it cleantech or not)—will be far more significant and rewarding than anything we’ve seen before.

Sounds to us like we may be turning a corner. Or, to stick to the metaphor, like we’ve come to the end of the Trough of Despair and are beginning the walk up the Slope of Enlightenment. It feels good, but we wonder: Is it just us? What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

Why do you do what you do?

My personal value system leads me to seek out professional experiences that contribute to multiple bottom line returns. My goal is that the work I do provides positive economic, ecological, and/or social benefits. I want to do the right thing, and make a lot of money doing it. Economic, ecological, and social returns are not mutually exclusive of each other.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of your job?

The most rewarding aspect of my job is being able to look back on the incremental victories and defeats and see how they culminated into a growing startup, product, or service. The work that CleanLaunch and impact entrepreneurs do is all about grinding execution. Execute, execute, execute. We are always striving for the next stage, milestone, or version and it is refreshing to take a moment to pause the frenzy and to celebrate the journey.

In your experience, what’s the one thing that most often gets in the way of great marketing?

I frequently see confusion of the expression of value in the customers’ terms. Entrepreneurial ventures that target multiple bottom line returns frequently have direct paying customers and “n” indirect customers who also derive a social, ecological, or economic benefit from the product/service. To raise capital and execute on that capital we must have the challenge expressed through the paying customer’s terms, but we frequently underestimate the power and influence that indirect customers have on operational results post product launch.

What’s the most important lesson that you’ve learned as a marketer/advocate?

Marketing is all about customer development. Marketing goes far beyond the 4 P’s and has a strategic role to play in determining what markets to enter, when to enter, how to enter, and how to integrate the customer into an iterative product development process.

If you could wave your wand and make any product or service in the world a smashing overnight success, what would it be?

I am going to cheat and wave the wand twice. First, it would be for the startups and companies using gamification to influence consumer behavior. We do a lot of work to commercialize more efficient energy, waste, and water technologies, but the best technologies won’t matter if we don’t change our usage behavior. The second wave would be for a transdisciplinary social and economic shift in the use of the valuation of ecosystem services for decision making. We do not have an economy without the provisioning, regulating, supporting, and cultural contributions of the natural world.

I was told sustainability is outside of our mission. How can that be?

Our answer? It can’t be. Cleantech or not, sustainability is always part of your mission as a company.

There are at least three business arguments for a focus on sustainability:

1. Cost

Sooner or later, every company will realize a financial benefit for energy efficiency and regulatory compliance. Those who seize the high ground here sooner will have less (expensive) catching up to do later.

2. Brand

Sooner or later, your customers will evaluate the products and services they buy on the basis of their understanding of your environmental stewardship (or lack thereof). The same goes for your investors.

3. Viability

Sooner or later, practices that are not sustainable in the clean, green, eco-friendly sense will not be sustainable in any sense. Scarce resources will disappear, demand will dry up, and disasters will cease operations altogether. This may occur later than sooner, but it’s the ultimate rational argument for protection, prevention and preparedness today.

Things that can’t be sustained eventually stop, by definition. You don’t want one of those things to be your business.

Why do you do what you do?

The big motivation is impact in the world, and that’s the primary motivation for PARC. Sure, we have to make a profit, but we’re mostly focused on impact. The cleantech program was initiated by a group of researchers in 2004 to talk about how PARC might get into the field. Their motivation (and mine) was environmental concern.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of your job?

Working with incredibly talented scientists and working through incredibly complicated puzzles to get things to the point where they can be commercialized. It’s intellectually very engaging work. The breadth of what we’re working on makes it very interesting for me as a researcher and as a manager.

In your experience, what’s the one thing that most often gets in the way of great marketing?

I would say thinking that you already know the answer when you engage a customer, and not asking enough questions. Basically, being too much of an advocate for your technology and not listening to customers enough. People sometimes get so excited about their work and don’t have the instinct to ask if this is something anyone cares about.

What’s the most important lesson that you’ve learned as a marketer/advocate?

Matching a new technology to a market is incredibly complicated and it takes much, much more effort and time than you might imagine. It’s more than going to a couple conferences and talking to a few experts. It’s incredibly involved. You have to understand a lot about the value chain. For example, we had a water filtration technology, and there are a lot of critical factors that aren’t technical: risk aversion, regulatory constraint, whether you’re a component of a solution or the whole solution, understanding how existing technologies perform. You can have something potentially very valuable but nobody wants it. Understanding the time and effort it takes to find out is very significant.

If you could wave your wand and make any product or service in the world a smashing overnight success, what would it be?

That’s a great question. Wow. I’ll say tiny, tiny houses. If everyone in the world who aspired to have a home (or who already has a home) went with a 15’ x 20’ home, the energy footprint would go way down and their acquisition of stuff would go way, way down. All sorts of positive environmental benefits would ensue.

That’s where translation comes in. You must describe your company and your technology so that people both understand it and care about it.

This process is not easy. But it is necessary. Assume for a moment that you’re an investor (and maybe you are). After reading the paragraphs below, would you understand what this company does and why you should be interested?

Reverse osmosis (RO) involves the reversal of flow through a membrane from a high salinity, or concentrated, solution to the high purity, or ‘permeate,’ stream on the opposite side of the membrane. Pressure is used as the driving force for the separation. The applied pressure (P) must be in excess of the osmotic pressure of the dissolved contaminants to allow flow across the membrane.

Our technologies use spiral-wound membranes to desalt and demineralize process water. The membrane’s operating conditions are fine-tuned to balance the flux with the specific rejection rates of contaminants to achieve up to 99.8% salt rejection at low pressures and high flux rates.

Neither could we. Here’s the translation into English:

Reverse osmosis separation technology is used to remove impurities from water through the use of a semi-permeable membrane. It is effective in the removal of dissolved solids, bacteria, pyrogens and organic contaminants.

The technology is used by municipalities and industrial facilities to ensure a consistently pure drinking water supply and to transform drinking water to high purity water for industrial use in the production of microelectronics, food and beverage, power, and pharmaceuticals.

Ah. Now we get it. Now we see the potential business value.

Translating technology effectively and efficiently can take years—even decades—of practice. But chances are, you don’t have the time to hone your skills, and you’re probably focusing on tasks that are more central to your core business.

How do you know if you need help with technology translation? Take a look at your company description and ask yourself:

• Would someone without a Ph.D. understand what my company does?
• Would a potential customer understand what my company does?
• Would an investor comprehend the business potential of my technology?
• Could the media copy and paste this into an article?

If you answered no to any of the above, consider some outside help. Often, a pair of fresh eyes can be of immense value. Have a colleague or friend—a layperson with no relevant technical background—read your elevator pitch, and then ask them if they understand it. If they don’t, have them circle the terms or phrases that they don’t understand or that are ambiguous. Then rewrite those terms or phrases in layperson terms until your audience does understand. You’ll be glad you did.

There’s the World Renewable Energy Forum here in Denver. That’s easy enough. And the Cleantech Open Conference and NREL Industry Growth Forum are musts for us. But there’s also the Cleantech Group’s annual conference, Cleantech 2012, CleanEdge and Greentech Media events, the Global New Energy Summit and many others. Expos for the green building industry, for smart grid technologies, vehicle electrification, energy storage and efficiency, solar and wind. All in addition to the many terrific university programs and government labs that sponsor annual events showcasing research projects with commercialization potential. And, of course, the countless investor summits around the country and around the world.

The invitations roll in all year, and the number of conferences seems to be proliferating despite worries that funding for cleantech startups is shrinking. Industry events can be money-makers and marketing bonanzas for conference organizers, and we’re certainly not opposed to that. But they can also be a drain on our collective time, attention and financial resources.

It’s time for consolidation.

Several industries dear to our hearts have seen a wave of expansion and exploration followed by a period of mergers, acquisitions, reorganizations and shutdowns. (This year it’s solar’s turn.) The process, while painful, is often described as a sign of market maturation. A step on the path to progress. Perhaps the same can be said of us—if not now, soon.

Look at it this way: it’s an energy efficiency move. Let’s be more efficient with our time, with our money, and with our intellectual energies. Especially during this time of shifting sands in the federal funding arenas, let’s band together to create fewer events, and let’s make sure they provide everything we need. After all, wouldn’t you rather be spending more time, money, and mental energy on perfecting your technology and growing your business?